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TO K THE "HERCULES" 




'THE THREE ADMIRALS:" REAR ADMIRAL ROBINSON, U. S. N. 
(left), VICE ADMIRAL BROWNING, R. N. (CENTER), REAR 
ADMIRAL GROSSET (FRENCH) (RIGHT) 



TO KIEL IN THE 
"HERCULES" 



BY 
LIEUT. LEWIS R. FREEMAN, R. N. V. R. 

OfHcial Correspondent with the Grand Fleet, and Member 
of Staff of Alhed Naval Armistice Commission 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS PROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE A UTHOR 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1919 



^"t 



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Copyright, 1919 
By DODD. mead AND COMPANY, Inc. 



OCT 28 1919 



^^ O <D 



VAIL-BAULOU COMPANr 
BINGHAMTON AND NEW TORK 



©CI.A536347 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Into German Waters 1 

II Getting Down to Work 31 

III First Impressions of "Starving Germany" . . 61 

IV Across the Sands to Norderney 92 

V NORDHOLZ, THE DeN OF THE ZePPELINS .... 122 

VI Merchant Shipping 154 

VII The Bombing of Tondern 179 

VIII Through the Canal to the Baltic .... 198 

IX To Warnemunde and Rugen 224 

X Jutland as a German Saw It 255 

XI Back to Base 283 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"The Three Admirals." Rear Admiral Robinson, U. S. N. 
(left), Vice Admiral Browning, R. N. (center), Rear 
Admiral Grosset, (French) (right) .... Frontispiece 

Heligoland in sight! 18 

Members of the Allied Naval Commission, Admiral Brown- 
ing in center 34 

The Allied Naval Commission and Staff, taken on board 
Hercules 34 

The Padre of the Hercules talking with newly arrived 
British prisoners 40 

In the Elbe, Hamburg 166 

Railroad station at Hamburg 166 

Floating dock for lifting submarines in Kiel Harbour . 182 

Birdseye view of Kiel 192 

In Kiel dockyard 192 

H. M. S. Viceroy entering Kiel Canal lock at Brunsbiittel 200 

Semaphore station on Kiel Canal, from Hercules . . . 206 

Kiel dockyard from the Harbour 214 

Foreshore of Kiel Harbour with the Kaiserlich Yacht 
Club at left of grove of trees 220 

Hindy (left) and German pilot who claimed to have 

launched the torpedo which damaged the Sussex . . 228 
British prisoners and German sailors at Wamemiinde . 240 
View of Kiel Canal from nearmost turret of the Hercules 258 
Hercules, with three V class destroyers in Kiel Harbour . 266 
H. M. S. Hercules and H. M. S. Constance in Kiel locks . 286 



TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" 



TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" 



INTO GEBMAN WATEES 

*'The Eegenshurg has been calling us for some 
time/* said the chief signal officer as he came 
down for his belated ** watch'* Imicheon in the 
ward-room, **and it looks as though we might 
expect to see her come nosing up out of the mist 
any time after two o'clock. She excuses herself 
for being late at the rendezvous by saying that 
the fog has been so thick in the Bight that she had 
to anchor during the night. It 's not any too good 
a prospect for a look-see at Heligoland, for our 
course hardly takes us within three miles of it at 
the nearest.*' 

It was in a fog that the Hercules had dropped 
down through the moored lines of the Grand Fleet 
the previous morning, it was in a fog that she had 
felt her way out of the Firth of Forth and by 
devious mine-swept channels to the North Sea, 
and it was still in a fog that she — ^the first surface 
warship of the Allies to penetrate deeply into them 
since the Battle of the Bight, not long after the 
outbreak of the war — ^was approaching German 



2 To Kiel in the *' Hercules" 

waters. Indeed, the whole last act of the great 
naval drama — from the coming of the Konigsherg 
to the Forth, with a delegation to receive the terms 
of surrender, to the incomparable pageant of the 
surrender itself — had been played out behind the 
fitful and uncertain raisings and lowerings of a fog- 
curtain ; and now the epilogue — wherein there was 
promise that much, if not all, that had remained 
a mystery throughout the unfolding of the war 
drama itself should be finally revealed — was be- 
ing held up through the wilfulness of this same 
perverse scene-shifter. The light cruiser, Regens- 
hurg, which, ** according to plan," was to have 
met us at nine that morning at a rendezvous sug- 
gested by the German Naval Staff, and pilot the 
Hercules through the mine-fields, had not been 
sighted by early afternoon. Numerous floating 
mines, rolling lazily in the bow-wave spreading to 
port and starboard and ogling us with leering, 
moon-faced impudence in the fog, had been sighted 
since daybreak, auguring darkly of the explosive 
barrier through which we were passing by the 
**safe course" the Germans (in lieu of the prom- 
ised charts which had failed to arrive) had ad- 
vised us by wireless to follow. 

Now mines, floating or submerged, are not 
pleasant things to navigate among. Although, 
theoretically, it is impossible for any ship to run 



Into German Waters 3 

into a floating mine even if she tries (the bow- 
wave tending to throw it off, as many experiments 
have proved) ; and although, theoretically, a ship 
fitted with paravanes cannot bring her hull into 
contact with a moored mine ; yet the fact remained 
that ships were being lost right along from both 
kinds. It seemed high time, then, in the case 
of the Hercules and her escorting destroyers, that 
the German Navy, which had undertaken to see 
them safely through the mine barrier, and which 
knew more about the pattern of its death-traps 
than any one else, should begin to shoulder some 
of its responsibilities. It was good news that the 
Regenshurg was about to make a tardy appearance 
and hand over a hostage in the form of a German 
pilot. 

■ •• • • • • • 

The blank grey fog-curtain which trailed its 
misty folds across the ward-room scuttles dis- 
couraged all of the grate-side loungers whom I 
tried to bestir to go up at two o'clock to watch 
for the appearance of the Regenshurg, and, meet- 
ing, with no better success in the snugly com- 
fortable ^^commission-room'' into which the 
former gun-room had been converted for the voy- 
age, I mounted alone the iron ladders which led to 
the lofty vantage of the signal bridge. There was 
only a few hundred yards of visibility, but the 



4 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

even throb of the engines, the swift run of the 
foam along the sides, and the sharp sting of the 
air on my cheek told that there had been little if 
any abatement of the steady speed of seventeen 
knots at which Hercules had been steaming since 
she passed May Island the previous day at noon. 
The Regenshurg, the chief yeoman of signals told 
me, had made a W.T. to say that she had been com- 
pelled by the fog to slow down again, and this, 
he figured, might make it between three and four 
o'clock before we picked her up. ** There's no 
use waiting for the Huns, sir," he said, with a 
tired smile, * * The hanging back habit, which they 
were four years in cultivating, seems to have 
grown on them so that they're hanging back even 
yet. Best go down and wait where it's warm, and 
I'll send a boy to call you when we know for 
certain when she'll turn up." 

My foot was on the ladder, when the sight of a 
seagull dancing a giddy pas seul on the titillating 
horn of a mine bobbing off astern recalled a story 
an Italian destroyer skipper had once told me, of 
how he had seen an Albanian sea eagle blow itself 
up as a consequence of executing a precisely simi- 
lar manoeuvre. I lingered to get the chief yeo- 
man 's opinion of what I had hitherto considered a 
highly apocryphal yarn, and when he was called 
away to take down a signal to pass back to the 



Into German Waters 5 

destroyers, the loom of what looked to me like 
a ship taking shape in the fog drew me over to the 
starboard rail. It dissolved and disappeared as 
my glass focussed on it, only to raise its 
amorphous blur again a point or so further abeam. 
Then I recognized it, and smiled indulgent wel- 
come to an old friend of many watches — the first 
cousin to the mirage, the looming shape which a 
man peering hard into thick fog keeps thinking 
he sees at one end or the other of the arc of his 
angle of vision. 

Any man actually on watch knows better than 
to let his mind take liberties with **fog pictures,'' 
and not a few of those who have done so have 
had the last picture of the series merge into a 
reality of wind and water and a good ship banging 
itself to pieces on a line of submerged rocks. But 
I — as so often in voyages of late — was on the 
bridge without duties or responsibilities. I was 
free to let the pictures take what form they would ; 
and it must have been what the chief yeoman 
had just said about the weariness of waiting for 
the Huns that turned my mind to what I had 
heard and seen of the four-year vigil of the Grand 
Fleet. 

There was a picture of Scapa as I had seen it 
on my earliest visit from the basket of a kite 
balloon towed from the old Campania, the same 



6 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

Campania wMcli now rested on the bottom of the 
Firth of Forth, and the top-masts of which we had 
passed a half cable's length to port as the Her- 
cules steamed out the day before. There were 
golden sun-notes weaving in a Maypole dance with 
rollicking slate-black cloud shadows in that pic- 
ture; but in the next — where the surface of the 
Flow was beaten to the whiteness of the snow- 
clad hills hemming it in — the brooding light was 
darkly sinister and ominous of import, for that 
was the winter day when we had word that two 
destroyers, which the might of the Grand Fleet 
was powerless to save, were being banged to bits 
against a cliff a few miles outside the gates. Then 
there was a picture of an Orkney midsummer mid- 
night — just such a night, the officer of the watch 
told me, as the one on which he had seen the 
Hampshire, with Kitchener pacing the quarter- 
deck alone, pass out to her doom two years previ- 
ously — ^with a fitful green light flooding the Flow, 
reflected from the sun circling just below the 
northern horizon, and every kite balloon in the 
air at the time being torn from its cable and sent 
flying towards Scandinavia before the ninety- 
mile gale which had sprung up from nowhere 
without warning. 

Visions of golf on Flotta, picnics under the 
cliffs of Hoy, and climbs up the peat-boggy sides 



Into German Waters 7 

of the Ward Hill of the ** Mainland, ' ' gave place 
to those of squadron boxing competitions — savage 
but cleanly fought bouts in a squared circle un- 
der the elevated guns of *^Q'' turret, with the fun- 
nels, superstructures, and improvised grandstands 
alive with bluejackets — and regattas, pulled off in 
various and sundry craft between the long lines 
of anchored battle-ships. A long series (these 
more like panoramas) of hurried unmoorings and 
departures — by division, by squadron, and with 
all the Grand Fleet, through every square mile of 
the North Sea from the Bight to far up the coast 
of Norway — finished up at Rosyth, in that strange 
fortnight just before the end, when all but those 
on the * inside'' thought the persistent ^* short 
notice'' was due to a desire to keep the men aboard 
on account of the 'flu, and not to the fact of which 
the Admiralty appear to have been so well advised, 
that the German naval authorities — for the first 
and last time — were making desperate efforts to 
get their ships out for the long-deferred Tag, 
Then the fog-bank ahead — or so it seemed — 
was splashed with the gay colour of ** Armistice 
Night," when all the spare signal lights (to say 
nothing of a lot that couldn't be spared) of the 
Grand Fleet streaked the sky with joyous spurts 
and fountains of fire, when stealthy pirate bands 
from the K-boats dropped through the ward-room 



8 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

skylights of the light cruisers and carried off pris- 
oners who had to be ransomed with champagne, 
when Admirals danced with matelots on the fore- 
castles of the battle-cruisers, and all the pent-up 
feelings of four years ascended in one great ex- 
pansive *^whouf '' of gladness. I recalled with a 
chuckle how the ** General" signal which the Com- 
mander-in-Chief had made ordering the historic 
occasion to be celebrated by ** splicing the main 
brace'' according to immemorial custom in the 
Navy, was preceded by ** Negative 6th B.S.," in 
consideration of the sad fact that the Yankee 
ships had nothing aboard to ** splice" with. That 
didn't prevent them, though, from bending a white 
ensign on their flag halliards, hoisting it to the 
main topmast of the New York, and illuminating 
it with all the search-lights of the squadron. That 
happy tribute, I recalled, to the flag of the Navy 
with which the Americans had served with such 
distinction for a year, had started the sacking of 
the signal light lockers, and that picture ended as 
it began, with the dour Scotch heavens lanced with 
coloured flame spurts which the dark tide of the 
Firth gave back in crinkly reflections. 

The next picture to sharpen into focus on the 
fog-curtain was that of a long, trim three-funnelled 
cruiser, with a white flag at her fore and the 
German naval ensign at her main, heading in to- 



Into German Waters 9 

ward the moutli of the Firth of Forth under the 
escort of a squadron of British light cruisers and 
destroyers. I had witnessed the meeting of the 
Konigsherg, which was bringing over Admiral 
Meurer and other German naval officers to ar- 
range the details of the surrender of the High 
Sea Fleet, from the foretop of the Cassandra. 
The rendezvous, at which the Konigsherg had been 
directed by wireless to meet the Sixth Light 
Cruiser Squadron ordered to escort her in, 
chanced to fall in an area under which a German 
submarine, a fortnight previously, had planted 
its full load of mines. These, in the regular 
course of patrol, had been discovered and swept 
up within a day or two, but since that fact had 
not been communicated to the Germans, the 
Konigsherg J doubtless thinking the English sense 
of humour had prompted them to prepare for her 
a bit of a surprise in the way of a lift by a 
German petard, skulked otf to the southward, 
where she was only rounded up after two hours of 
rending the ether with wireless calls. There were 
two things I remembered especially in connection 
with that historic meeting — one was the mob of 
civilians (probably would-be delegates from the 
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council) jostling the 
officers on the roomy bridge of the Konigsherg, 
and the other was the fluent cursing of the gun- 



10 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

nery lieutenant of the Cassandra, who was with 
me in the f oretop, over the unkind fate which had 
robbed him of the chance of opening up with his 
six-inch guns on the first Hun warship he had 
set eyes on since the war began. I thought I had 
heard in the course of the past year all that the 
British sailor had to say of the German as a naval 
foe ; but L said several new things that after- 
noon, and said them well. 

Poor old Cassandra! Although we did not get 
word of it until a day or two after our arrival in 
Wilhelmshaven, within a very few hours of the 
time I was thinking of her there in the fog of the 
Bight, she had collided with a mine in the Baltic 
and gone to the bottom. 

There was another picture of the Konigsherg 
ready to follow on as the first dissolved. This 
was the brilliantly lighted hull of her — the only 
undarkened ship of the hundreds in the Firth of 
Forth that night — as I saw it an hour before day- 
break the following morning, when I set off from 
the Cassandra in a motor launch to be present in 
the Queen Elizabeth during the historic conference 
which was to take place there that day. Admiral 
Beatty had refused to receive the revolutionary 
delegates at the preliminary conference which had 
been held in the British flagship the previous 
night, and as a consequence it appears that Ad- 



Into German Waters 11 

miral Meurer and his staff were summoned to 
make a report to their ** superiors'' on their re- 
turn. This strange meeting had been convened 
shortly after midnight (so the captain of the M.L., 
which had been patrolling round the Konigsherg 
all night, told me),, but still, five hours later, as 
*^M.L. 262'' slid quietly by at quarter speed, the 
rumble of guttural Teutonic voices raised in 
heated argument welled out of the open scuttles 
of what had probably been the ward-room. It oc- 
curred to me even then that this rumble of angry 
dispute was prophetic of what Germany had ahead 
in the long night that was closing upon her. 

Although ^*M.L. 262" ended up an hour later 
with her propellers tangled in the cable of Ox- 
Guard boom, I managed to get on the flagship in 
time to see Admiral Meurer and his party come 
climbing up out of the fog to her quarter-deck. 
The conference lasted, with short intervals, un- 
til long after dark, and the next picture I saw 
was that of five German naval officers, chagrined 
and crestfallen, being piped over the side to the 
barge which was to take them to the destroyer 
standing by in the fog to return with them to the 
Konigsherg at her anchorage, Inchkeith. It was 
** Officers' Night" for the kinema in the ^*Q.E.," 
and they were showing a **made-in-California" 
film called the **Eise and Fall of Julius Caesar." 



12 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

I remember distinctly that Casca had just driven 
the first thrust, and the mob of conspirators were 
thronging upon Caesar round the **base of Pom- 
pey's statue/^ when the commander sent me word 
that the guests were about to depart. 

The captain of the fleet, the captain, the com- 
mander, the officer of the watch and the boatswain 
were waiting at the head of the starboard gang- 
way as I stepped on deck, and out of the fog, which 
had thickened till I could not see the muzzles of 
the guns of ^<Y^^ turret, the Germans were ad- 
vancing from aft. The frown on Admiral Meu- 
rer 's heavy brows was magnified by the cross light 
of the ^* yard-arm group'' at the gangway, and his 
mouth, with its thin hard lips, showed as a straight 
black line. With a click of the heels and the char- 
acteristic automaton bow of the German, he 
saluted the British officers in turn, beginning with 
the captain of the fleet, stepped down the short 
gangway and disappeared into the waiting barge 
to the shrilling of the pipes. Bowing and click- 
ing, the others followed suit, a weedy '^sub,'* 
with an enormous roll of papers under his arm, 
going over last. 

The Oaky herself invisible in the fog, groped 
blindly with her searchlight to pick up the barge. 
'*We must hold the light steady,'' facetiously 
quoted the Press correspondent at my elbow from 



Into German Waters 13 

a speecli of President Wilson's which had ap- 
peared in the morning papers, and then added 
thoughtfully, **It may be a light that kind need 
for guidance, but if I had the leading of them for 
the next generation it would be by a ring in the 
nose.'' 

Now, panorama resumed. It was the day of 
the surrender, and the Cardiff, with her high- 
flown kite balloon in tow, was leading the line of 
German battle-cruisers out of the eastern mist. 
I was watching from the bridge of the Erin, and 
an officer beside me, recognizing the Seydlitz, fly- 
ing the rear-admiral's flag, in the lead, with the 
Molthe and Derfflinger next in line, told how, 
from the light cruiser in which he had chased 
them at Dogger Bank, he had seen at least two 
of the three, leaving the Blucher to her fate, 
dashing for the shelter of their minefields with 
flam'es swirling about their mastheads. Another 
spoke casually of how, in the Tiger at Jutland, he 
had been for a wild minute or two, while his ship 
was rounding a ** windy corner" as Beatty turned 
north to meet the British Battle Fleet, under the 
concentrated fire of all the battle-cruisers — ^with 
the exception of the Hindenhurg, but with the 
Lutzow added — now steaming past us. We re- 
marked the ^* flattery of imitation" in the resem- 
blance of the Hindenhurg with her long run of 



14 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

forecastle and '^ flare" bows, to the Repulse and 
Renown, and of the symmetrical, two-funnelled 
Bayern as she appeared between the Kaisers and 
the Konigs in the German battleship line to the 
British Queen Elizabeth class laid down before 
the war. The Queen Elizaheth herself, falling 
out of line to take the salute of the ships of the 
fleet she had led to victory as they passed, brought 
that reel of panorama to an end. 

The next was of five ships of the Kaiser class, 
as they had appeared from the Emperor of India, 
which, with the rest of the Second Division, was 
escorting a squadron of the enemy to Scapa for 
internment. We saw the German ships at closer 
range now, and the better we saw them the worse 
they looked. Their fine solidity was less im- 
pressive than from a distance, for now our glasses 
revealed the filth of the decks, the lack of paint, 
and the slovenly, sullen attitude of the motley 
garbed figures lounging along the rails. We 
passed within a biscuit toss of the Kaiserin when 
their leading ship, the Friedrich der Grosse, lost 
her bearings in some way and failed to follow the 
Canada through the anti-submarine boom off the 
end of Flotta, an action which only the smartest 
kind of seamanship on the part of the division of 
Iron Dukes prevented from developing into a seri- 
ous disaster. Most of the Huns — ^to judge by 



Into German Waters 15 

the expression on the faces leering across at us — 
would have welcomed a smash ; but it was avoided 
by a hair, and they ultimately straightened them- 
selves out, straggled through into the Flow, and 
on to their more or less final resting-place, off the 
inner entrance to Gutter Sound. 

The final picture, as it chanced, which my fancy 
projected on the curtain of the fog was one that 
embraced what I saw from the steam pinnace 
which was taking me to the Imperieuse, on my way 
back to Eosyth. An angry Orkney sunset was 
flaring over the hills of Hoy — a sullenly red glow, 
gridironed by thin strata of black cloud like the 
bars of a grate — and a sinister squall was ad- 
vancing from the direction of Stromness to the 
northward. For a few moments the hot light of 
the sunset had silhouetted the confused hulls of 
battleships and battle-cruisers against the silvered 
seas beyond, and revealed the disordered phalanx 
of the moored destroyers blocking the mouth of 
Gutter Sound; then it was quenched by the on- 
rush of the storm clouds, and all that was left of 
the High Seas Fleet disappeared into shadow 
and driving rain. 

It was a far cry, I reflected, from the Kaiser's 
**Our future lies upon the seas!'' and Admiral 
Kodman's **The German ships are of no use to 
anybody; the simplest solution of the problem 



16 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

of their disposition is to take the whole lot to sea 
and sink them. ^ ' And yet — 

Suddenly, stereoscopically clear, on the blank 
sheet of the fog left as the High Sea Fleet faded 
from sight, the head-on silhouette of an unmis- 
takably German light cruiser appeared. For an 
instant the soaring mast and the broad bridge 
suggested that my fancy had materialized the 
Konigsherg again. Then the rat-a-tat of a signal 
searchlight recalled me to my senses, and it did 
not need the chief yeoman of signals^ *' There 
she is, sir; sending away a boat to bring us a 
pilot,'' to tell me we had finally rendezvoused 
with the Regenshurg. I descended to the quarter- 
deck to see the pilot come over the side. 

Very smartly handled was that cutter from the 
Regenshurg, I remember that especially because 
it was almost the only German boat that came 
alongside during all the visit which did not either 
ram the gangway, or else miss it more than the 
length of a boat-hook. They explained this by 
saying that most of the skilled men had left the 
navy, and that their boats, as a consequence, were 
in the hands of comparative novices. At any rate, 
at least one first-class crew of boat-pullers had re- 
mained in the Regenshurg, and they brought their 
cutter alongside the gangway as neatly as though 
the Hercules were lying in harbour. 



Into German Waters 17 

Three men, each carrying a small suit-case, came 
over the side and saluted the officer of the day 
and the intelligence officer of the admiral's staff, 
who awaited them at the head of the gangway. 
The first was a three-stripe officer of the rank the 
Germans call Korvettenkapitan, the second a war- 
rant officer, and the third (as we presently were 
informed) a qualified merchant pilot. The 
Korvettenkapitan was slender of figure, and had 
a well-bred, gentlemanly appearance not in the 
least suggestive of the ^^Hunnishness'' one asso- 
ciated — and with good reason, too, as subsequent 
experience proved — with the German naval officer. 
His flushed expression showed plainly that he felt 
deeply the humiliation of the task assigned him of 
taking the first enemy warships into a German 
harbour. His head remained bowed a moment 
after his final salute ; then he took a deep breath, 
squared his shoulders, and asked to be conducted 
to the bridge at once in order to take advantage 
of the improved visibility in pushing on in through 
the minefields. 

If one felt a touch of involuntary sympathy for 
the senior naval officer, a glance at the sinister 
figure of the merchant pilot was an efficacious 
antidote. Thick-set and muscular of build, with 
slack-hanging ape-like arms and bandy legs, his 
corded bull neck was crowned with the prognath- 



18 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

ous- jawed head of a gorilla, and a countenance 
that might well have been a composite of the 
saturnine phizzes of Trotsky and Liebknecht. 
One knew in an instant that here was the super- 
Bolshevik, and looked for the red band on his 
sleeve, which could only have been temporarily re- 
moved while he appeared among the Englanders 
to spy upon the naval officer whom the revolution- 
ists would not permit to act alone. The way 
things stood between the two became evident al- 
most at once, for the officer informed the British 
interpreter at the first opportunity that he could 
not be responsible for the pilot, while the latter, 
when some query from the Korvettenkapitan re- 
specting the position of a certain buoy was re- 
peated to him, contented himself with drawing his 
fingers significantly across his throat, clucking 
in apparent imitation of a severed wind-pipe, and 
continuing the guzzling of the plate of *^ kedgeree" 
which had been engaging his undivided attention 
at the moment of interruption. 

After putting a German pilot aboard each of 
the four destroyers, the Regenshurg's cutter was 
hoisted in, and we got under weigh again. The 
visibility had improved considerably, and pres- 
ently a darker blur on the misty skyline resolved 
itself into the familiar profile of Heligoland. At 
first only the loom of the great cliff was dis- 




w 

a 
»— I 

t— t 
Q 

o 
o 



Into German Waters 19 

cernible, but by the time this had been brought 
abeam a slender strip of low-lying ground with 
warehouses, cranes, and the masts of ships, was 
distinctly visible. All hands crowded to the star- 
board side to have a glimpse of Germany ^s famous 
island outpost, but the nearest thing to a demon- 
stration I saw was by two marines, who were doing 
a bit of a shuffle on the precarious footing of a 
turret top and singing lustily : 

*'0h, won't it be grand out in Hel-i-go-land, 
When we've wound up the Watch on the Rhine!" 

Whatever illusions they had formed of the 
**grandness'' of Heligoland they were allowed 
to keep, for the only ones who were given to see at 
close range the dismal greyness of the island for- 
tress were the members of one of the **air^' par- 
ties, who made a hurried visit in a destroyer to 
see that the provisions of the Armistice had been 
carried out at the seaplane station. 

The thickening fog-banks which shut off our 
view of Heligoland were not long in thinning the 
guiding Regensburg to a dusky phantom nosing 
uncertainly into the misty smother in the direction 
of where our charts indicated the Bight should be 
narrowing to the shallow waters of Jade Bay, in 
an inner corner of which lay Wilhelmshaven. 
We had counted on getting there that evening, and 



20 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

a wireless had already been received saying that 
a German Naval Commission was standing by to 
come off for a preliminary conference. After 
heading in for a couple of hours through seas 
which I heard an officer coming off watch describe 
as ** composed of about equal parts of water, mis- 
placed buoys and j&oating mines," all hopes of 
arriving that night were dashed by a signal from 
the Regenshurg, saying that she had been com- 
pelled to anchor on account of the fog. Calling 
her destroyer * ' chicks ' ' about her to mother them 
for the night, the Hercules let go what was prob- 
ably the first anchor a British surface ship had 
dropped iato German mud since the outbreak of 
the war. 

The unexpected delay made it necessary for 
both the Hercules and the destroyer to put up their 
pilots for the night. This was managed in the 
former by giving the officer the flag captain's sea- 
cabin, and slinging hammocks for his two assist- 
ants outside. Doubtless the opportunity to enjoy 
a change of food was not unwelcome to any of 
them. They were served with the regular ward- 
room dinner. The officer declined the offer of 
drinks, and said he had his own cigarettes. The 
other two made a clean sweep of anything that 
they could get hold of. Even these had cigarettes, 
but the young signalman who had the temerity to 



Into German Waters 21 

smoke one which was proffered him in exchange 
for one of his own, advanced that as an excuse for 
a mess he made of taking down a searchlight sig- 
nal from a destroyer two hours later. 

^^That Bolshevik/^ said the lad the next 

day, in telling me about the tragedy, ** declared 
the fag he giv' me was made of baccy smuggled 
into Germany by a friend of his. I tells him that 
was no kind of reason for him using me to smug- 
gle the smoke out of Germany. And I tells him it 
tastes to me like rope end, that baccy, and, what's 
more, that I'd be very happy to return it to him 
with a rope end. I can't say for certain whether 
he twigged that little joke or not." 

From one of the destroyers, too, there came the 
next day a story of similar friction in the matter 
of dispensing hospitality to the guest of the night. 
The latter, unlike the one who was sent to the 
Hercules, appears to have been a typical Hun. 
Beginning by introducing himself as a relative of 
the ex-Kaiser, he ended up by all but going on 
strike because no sheets could be provided for the 
bunk in the cabin which — through turning out its 
owner to ** sling" in the ward-room — had been 
given him for the night. That alone had been a 
considerable concession under the circumstances, 
for, through the presence of two extra flying offi- 
cers, two **subs" had given up their cabins, and 



22 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

were sleeping in the ward-room already. It must 
have been a really amusing show that young sprig 
of Junkerism put up. He mentioned the matter 
of linen, several times, finally rising to the cres- 
cendo of "I must have the sheets by nine o'clock, 
and it now lacks but ^ve minutes of that time." I 
was never able to verify the story that the steward 
really gave him the sheets of notepaper that one 
of the Yankee officers volunteered to contribute. 
How mad the young exquisite was about the whole 
affair may be judged from the fact that he left 
behind him in the morning his own personal and 
private cake — only slightly used — of toilet soap. 
Whether this was pure swank — high princely dis- 
dain of an object of value — or whether he was 
blind with passion and overlooked it^ they could 

never quite make up their minds in the V . 

The fog lapped and curled dankly round the 
Hercules that night, wrapping the ship in a 
clammy shroud of cold moisture that dripped 
eerily from the rigging and sent a chill to the mar- 
row of the bones of the men and officers on watch. 
But below there was warmth and comfort. The 
ward-room celebrated the occasion with a ^^rag" 
to the music of its own Jazz band, while in the 
admiral's cabin the kinema man, who had been 
brought along to film the historic features of the 
voyage, entertained with a movie of a South Amer- 



Into German Waters 23 

ican revolution, a picture full of the play of hot 
passion and fierce jealousy, enacted in and around 
an ancient castle which none but a Californian 
could have recognized as a building of the recent 
San Diego Exposition. * ^ The Admiral 's Movies, ' ' 
'*With a Complete Change of Program Nightly, '^ 
became one of the star turns of the voyage from 
that time on. 

Cut off though we were by the fog from sighting 
anything farther away than the riding lights of 
the nearest destroyer, strange voices of the new 
world we had moved into since morning kept 
reaching the Hercules on the wings of the wire- 
less. Now it was the Regenshurg calling to say, 
*^I am lying off Outer Jade Lightship and illumi- 
nating it with my searchlight." Not much help, 
that, on a night when a searchlight itself was 
quenched to a will-o'-the-wisp at a cable's length. 
Then there was a message from the main fount 
of some *^ Workmen's and Soldiers' Council" re- 
questing that the Allied Naval Commission should 
receive a delegation of its members at Wilhelms- 
haven. It was not a long message, but the reply 
flashed back to it was, I understand, a good deal 
shorter. There was chatter between ship and 
ship, and even the call — from somewhere in the 
Baltic, I believe — of a steamer in distress. The 
name of the Mo ewe, in an otherwise unintelligible 



24 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

message, caused hardly the flutter it would have 
had we picked it up in the same waters a month 
earlier. 

There was little news to us in a message from 
some land station telling all and sundry that the 
** high-sea-ship'' Begenshurg was '^zu Anker hei 
aussen Jade Feuerschiff/' that the Hercules and 
destroyers were ^^zu Anker hei Weser Feuer- 
schiff/' and that there was ^^noch Nehel.'^ The 
Begenshurg had already told us where she was and 
our own position we knew: also the fact that ''fog 
continues." 

A groan from Germany m travail reached us 
in a message from the ^^Soldatenraf of the 
*^ Fortress of Borkum'' to the Council in Berlin. 
They disapproved most heartily of the attitude of 
the meeting of the ^^ Gross Berliner'^ councils for 
Greater Germany. They greatly regretted the at- 
tempt of one part of the people to establish a dic- 
tatorship over another, and considered that this 
showed a lamentable lack of confidence in ^^un- 
serem Volke'^ — **our people.'' ^^Wir wollen 
Demokratie und keine Diktatur/^ they concluded; 
**we want a democracy and no dictator." 

Then we heard the German battleship Konig 
(which, in company with the Dresden, a destroyer 
and two transports, we had sighted that morning 
tardily en voyage to make up the promised quota 



Into German Waters 25 

at Scapa) calling to the Revenge — at that time the 
flagship of the squadron watching the interned 
ships — for guidance. ^*Am near to the point of 
assembly with the other ships/' she said in Ger- 
man, ^^and bad weather is coming on. Cannot 
stop with Dresden in tow. What course can I 
take from point of assembly?'' 

Deep called to deep when the C.-in-C. of the 
Grand Fleet at Eosyth told the C.-in-C. of the 
High Sea Fleet what arrangements were being 
made to send back the surplus crews of the in- 
terned ships, and for a while the vibrant ether let 
fall such familiar names as Karlsruhe^ Emden, 
Nilrnherg, Hindenhurg, Kaiser, Von der Tann and 
Friedrich der Grosse, men from all of which, we 
learned, were to be started homeward in a trans- 
port called the Pretoria. 

There was hint of * ^ family trouble ' ' in the Ger- 
man Navy in a signal from Admiral Von Eeuter 
at Scapa to the Commander-in-Chief of the High 
Sea Fleet at Wilhelmshaven. ** Request that 
third group (of transports) may include a flag 
officer to relieve me," it ran in translation, **as I 
am returning home with it on account of sickness. ' ' 

That signal, I think, gave the ward-room more 
quiet enjoyment than any of the others, for it was 
the first forerunning flutter of the German wings 
beginning to beat against the bars of Scapa. 



26 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

**IVe often been a prey to that same complaint 
during our four years at Scapa," said the com- 
mander musingly, in the interval following the 
passing round of the wireless wail. **0f course 
Admiral Von Eeuter is sick — ^homesick. Who 
wasn't? Who isnHf But there was no use in 
sending a signal to any one complaining about it. 
But isn 't it worth just about all we went through 
in sticking it there for four years to be able to 
think of the Huns being interned there, and in 
their own ships I They're not quite so comfy as 
ours to live in, you know. I wonder what Herr 
C.-in-C.'s answer will be.'' 

That answer was picked up in good time. 
''First group of transports have arrived back 
safely, ' ' the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea 
Fleet began inconsequentially, adding abruptly, 
'^Admiral Von Renter is advised to stay where he 
is, if at all possible." That pleased the ward- 
room so much that the Junior Officers' Glee Club 
was sent to the piano to create a ''Scapa atmos- 
phere" by singing songs of the strenuous early 
months of the war. ' ' Coaling, coaling, coaling, al- 
ways jolly well coaling," to the air of ''Holy, Holy, 
Holy!" reached my ears even in the secluded re- 
treat of the "commission-room," to which I had 
retired to write up my diary. 

But the most amusing message of all was one 



Into German Waters 27 

which the senior interpreter — one time a distin- 
guished Cambridge professor of modern lan- 
guages — was dragged out of his bunk at something 
like three o^clock in the morning to translate. 
Everything sent out in German was being meshed 
in our wireless net on the off-chance that informa- 
tion of importance might be picked up, and, for 
some reason, the message in question impressed 
the night operator — as it lay before him, fresh 
caught, upon his pad, as being of especial signifi- 
cance. This was what I deciphered on the sheet 
of naval signal paper which the senior inter- 
preter, returning all a-shiver to his bunk after 
making the desired translation in the coding room, 
threw at my head when I awoke in the next bunk 
and asked sleepily for the news. 

(?)to(?). 
^^Good morning. Eequest the time accord- 
ing to you. My watch is fast, I think. ' ' 

It was probably from the skipper of one trawler 
to his ** opposite number" in another. It was 

on my lips to ask Lieut. B if he expected to 

be called when the reply was picked up, but the 
ominous glare in the unpillowed eye he turned in 
my direction as I started to speak made me change 
my mind. 



28 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

The fog was still thick at daybreak of the fol- 
lowing morning, but by ten o'clock the visibility 
had improved sufficiently to appear to make it 
worth while to get under weigh. Heading easterly 
at twelve knots, we shortly came to a buoy-marked 
channel which, according to our directions, prom- 
ised to lead in to the anchorage off Wilhelmshaven 
we desired to reach. The Regenshurg, which had 
evidently gone in ahead, was not sighted again, 
but two powerful armed patrol boats came out to 
keep us company. It was soon possible to see for 
several miles, the low line of the Frisian coast 
coming into sight to port and starboard. 

Presently we passed, on opposite courses, a 
German merchant steamer. Luckily, some one on 
the bridge observed in time that she had a man 
standing by the flag halyards at her stern, and so 
we were prepared to return with the white ensign 
what must have been the first dip a British ship 
had had from a Grerman since August, 1914. 
When the second and third steamers encountered 
also dipped their red, white, and black bunting, 
followed by similar action on the part of two 
tugs and a lighthouse tender, it became evident 
that general orders in that connection had been 
issued. That was our first hint of the ** concilia- 
tory '* tactics which it soon became apparent all 
of that part of Northern Germany with which 



Into German Waters 29 

there was a chance of any of the Allied Naval 
Armistice Commission coming in contact had been 
instructed to follow. 

The steeples and factory chimneys of Wilhelms- 
haven began appearing over the port bow at noon, 
and a half-hour later Hercules had dropped anchor 
about a mile oif a long stone mole which curved 
out from the dockyard. Almost immediately a 
launch was seen putting out of the entrance, and 
presently it came bumping alongside the star- 
board gangway. Eear-Admiral Goette, a smooth- 
shaven, heavy set man of about fifty, was the 
first up to the quarter-deck, where his salute was 
returned by the captain, commander, the officer 
of the day, and several officers of Admiral Brown- 
ing's staff. His puckered brow indicated some- 
thing of the mental strain he was under, a strain 
the effects of which became more and more evi- 
dent every time he came off for a conference. 

The thirteen other members of the Commission 
under Admiral Goette 's presidency followed him 
up the gangway. The first of these, a tall blond 
officer of fine bearing, was on the list as Kapitan 
z. S. von Muller, but it was not until after the final 
conference, over a fortnight later, that we learned 
for certain that he was the able and resolute com- 
mander of the Emden, famous in the first year of 
the war for her destruction of Allied commerce 



30 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

and the fine fight he had put up before being forced 
to the beach of North Cocos Island by the faster 
and heavier armed Sydney. If it was a fact, as 
has been suggested, that the Germans put Von 
Muller on their Naval Armistice Commission be- 
cause of the admiration that had been expressed 
in the British papers of his brave and sporting 
conduct on the latter occasion, the effect of this 
fine piece of Teutonic subtlety was completely lost. 
As I have said, his real identity was not discovered 
until the last of the conferences was over. 

As soon as the last of the German ofiicers had 
reached the quarter-deck and completed his round 
of heel-clicking salutes, the party was conducted 
directly to Admiral Browning's cabin, where the 
first of a series of conferences calculated deeply 
to influence Germany's naval future for many 
years to come was entered into without delay. 



n 

GETTING DOWN TO WORK 

An unfailing test of the treatment the Germans 
would have meted out to the Allies had their re- 
spective positions been reversed during the armis- 
tice interval, was furnished by the attitude of 
all the enemy people — from the highest official rep- 
resentatives to the crowds on the streets — ^with 
whom Admiral Browning's Naval Commission 
was thrown in contact. This was especially no- 
ticeable in the case of naval officers, and with none 
of these more so than with the greater part of 
those constituting the commission, presided over 
by Eear-Admiral Goette, which met the Allied 
Commission to arrange the details of carrying out 
the provisions of the armistice relating to mari- 
time affairs. Fully expecting from the repre- 
sentatives of the victorious Allies the same treat- 
'ment they had extended to the beaten Eussians at 
Brest-Litovsk, and the beaten Rumanians at 
Bucharest, they adopted from the outset an atti- 
tude of sullen distrust, evidently with the idea that 
it was the one best calculated to minimize the 
concessions they would be called upon to make. 

31 



32 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

"When it transpired that the Allied commissioners 
appeared to have no intention of exercising their 
victor 's prerogative of hmniliating the emissaries 
of a beaten enemy — as no Prussian conld ever have 
refrained from doing in similar circumstances — 
but that, on the other hand, the former were 
neither disposed to bargain, *^ negotiate, ^^ nor in 
any way to abate one whit from their just de- 
mands, the attitude of the Germans changed some- 
what. They were more reasonable and easy to 
deal with; yet to the last there was always dis- 
cernible that feeling of thinly veiled contempt 
which the beaten bully cannot conceal for a victor 
who fails to treat him as he himself would have 
treated any adversary he had downed. 

The opening conference between the Allied and 
German commissions was held ia Admiral Brown- 
ing's dining cabin in the Hercules, as were all of 
those which followed. The German officers, leav- 
ing their overcoats and caps in a cabin set aside 
for them as an ante-room, were conducted to the 
conference room, where the heads of the Allied 
Commission were already assembled and in their 
places. Most of the Germans were in fjock coats 
(of fine material and extremely well cut), with 
small dirk-like swords at hip, and much-bemed- 
alled. There was none of them, so far as one 
could see, without one grade or another of the 



Getting Down to Work 33 

Iron Cross, worn low on the left breast (or just 
about over the liver, to locate it more exactly), 
with its black-and-white ribbon rove through a 
lapel. Only Captain Von Mtiller wore the cov- 
eted **Pour le Merite,'' doubtless for his com- 
merce destruction with the Emden. Admiral 
Goette wore two rows of ribbons, but none of the 
decorations themselves. 

The Allied delegates rose as the Germans en- 
tered, remaining standing until the latter had been 
shown to the places assigned them. At the right 
of the main table, as seen from the door, was 
seated Admiral Browning, with Eear-Admiral 
Grasset, of the French Navy, on his right, and 
E»ear-Admiral Eobinson, of the American Navy, 
on his left. Captain Lowndes, Admiral Brown- 
ing's Chief of Staff, -sat next to Admiral Eobin- 
son, in the fourth chair on the Allied side of the 
table. The Flag Lieutenants of the French and 
American Admirals, and the two officers repre- 
senting respectively Japan and Italy, occupied 
chairs immediately beyond the senior officers of 
the Commission. At two smaller tables in the 
rear were several British Flag officers, with secre- 
taries and stenographers. The official British in- 
terpreter, Lieut. Bullough, E.N.V.E., sat at the 
head of the table. The heads of the Allied sub- 
commissions representing the flying services and 



34 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

shipping did not occupy seats during all of the 
conference, but were called in during the discus- 
sion of matters in which they were interested. 

Admiral Goette was seated directly opposite 
Admiral Browning at the main table, with Com- 
mander (or Korvettenkapitan) Hinzman on his 
right, and Commander Lohman on his left. The 
former — a shifty-eyed individual, with a pasty 
complexion and a ** mobile'' mouth which, in its 
peculiar expansions and contractions, furnished 
an accurate index of the state of its owner 's mind 
— was from the General Naval Staff in Berlin, 
which accounted, doubtless, for the fact that Ad- 
miral Goette turned to him for advice in connec- 
tion with practically every question discussed. 
Commander Lohman had charge of merchant ship- 
ping interests, which were principally in connec- 
tion with the return of British tonnage interned 
in German harbours at the outbreak of the war. 
Captain Von Miiller sat at the left-hand corner of 
the table, and Captain Bauer, Chief of Staff, in the 
corresponding place on the right. At a smaller 
table opposite the door the eight remaining Ger- 
man officers were seated. These were mostly en- 
gineers, or from the flying or submarine services, 
and were consulted as questions in their respective 
lines arose from time to time. 

Without wasting time in preliminaries, Ad- 




MEMBERS OF THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION, ADMIRAL 

BROWNING IN CENTER 



fi 



f-'-'-;^^ 







' s> A i 



THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION AND STAFF, TAKEN ON BOARD 

"HERCULES" 



Getting Down to "Work 35 

miral Browning got down to business at once by 
intimating that, since the time which he could re- 
main in German waters was limited, it would be 
desirable that the very considerable number of 
visits of inspection necessary to satisfy the Com- 
mission that the terms of the armistice had been 
complied with should begin without delay. The 
Germans had a formidable array of reasons ready 
to show why all, or nearly all, of these visits would 
be practically out of the question. The disturbed 
state of the country, the uncertain situation in 
Berlin, the lack of discipline among the men re- 
maining in the ships and at the air stations, the 
shortage of petrol, the possibility of the hostility 
of the people in some sections — such as Hamburg 
and Bremen — to Allied visitors — these were a few 
of the reasons advanced why it would be difficult 
or dangerous to go to this place or that, and why 
the best and simplest way would be to be content 
with the assurance of the German Commission 
that everything, everywhere, was just as the ar- 
mistice terms had stipulated. Of course, at Wil- 
helmshaven, where things were quiet at the mo- 
ment, and where they still had a certain amount 
of authority, there should be no great difficulty in 
going over the remaining warships and visiting 
the air-station; but as for going to Hamburg, or 
Bremen, or visiting any of the more distant naval 



36 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

air stations — that was impossible at the present. 

Asked bluntly, if the search of the warships 
could begin that afternoon, Admiral Goette re- 
plied that it was impossible, for the reason he was 
not yet in a position to guarantee the personal 
safety of any parties landing even at the dock- 
yard. Moreover, he would not be in position to 
give such a guarantee until the matter had been 
discussed with the Workmen ^s and Soldiers' Coun- 
cil. Of course, if the party cared to take the 
chance of landing without a guarantee of safety — 

That was really just about as far as that first 
conference got in the way of definite arrange- 
ments, or even assurances. Admiral Goette was 
given very plainly to understand, however, that it 
was the intention of the Allied Commission to visit 
and inspect, in accordance with the terms laid 
down in the armistice, not only all of the remain- 
ing German warships, but also all interned British 
merchantmen, irrespective of where they were, 
and all naval airship and seaplane stations, on the 
Baltic as well as the North Sea side. Also, that 
full and complete guarantee of the safety of every 
party landed must be given before the first visit 
was made. Failing this, it would be necessary for 
the Commission to return to England and report 
that the assistance promised by Germany in carry- 
ing out the armistice terms had not been given. 



Getting Down to Work 37 

The deep corrugation in Admiral Goette 's brow 
grew deeper still when he heard this plain warn- 
ing, and the corners of his hard cynical mouth 
drew down at the corners as the thin lips were 
compressed in his effort at self-control. Shuffling 
uneasily in his chair, he leaned over as though to 
speak to the sardonic Hinzman on his right, but 
thought better of it, and straightened up again. 
Then his deep-set eyes wandered to the large-scale 
map of the Western Front which occupied most 
of the wall of the cabin toward which he faced. 
The row of pins, which had marked the line of the 
Front at the moment of the armistice, but had now 
been moved up and over the Ehine in three pro- 
tuberant bridgeheads, evidently brought home to 
him the futility of any further circumlocutions 
for the present. The muscles of the aggressively 
squared shoulders relaxed, the combative lines of 
the face melted into furrows of deepest depres- 
sion, and the pugnacious jaw was drawn in as the 
iron-grey head was bowed in submission. His 
throaty '^It shall be done as you say, sir," told 
that the first lesson had sunk home. 

An undertaking on the part of the German Com- 
mission to secure, and to send off at an as early 
hour as practicable the following morning, the 
required **safe conduct,'' brought the first con- 
ference to a close. The kinema man, who endeav- 



38 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

oured to take a picture of the departure from 
cover, in order not to offend the sensibilities of 
his distinguished subjects, spoiled a film as a con- 
sequence of his consideration. Observing that 
the galley scuttle opened out upon the quarter- 
deck, but not (in his haste) that the pots of beans 
simmering on the range were filling the air with 
clouds of steam as thick as fragrant, set up his 
machine just inside. Engrossed in turning the 
crank as one Hun after another went through his 
heel-clicking round of salutes, he failed to notice 
the translucent mask of moisture condensing on his 
lens. The natural result was that this particular 
reel of film, when it came to be developed, had very 
little to differentiate it from another reel he ex- 
posed the following morning on the men * * doubling 
round, ' ' the latter having been taken with the cap 
over the lens. 

The situation as it presented itself that evening 
was far from encouraging. Having no informa- 
tion whatever of our own as to conditions ashore, 
we had, perforce, to take the word of the Ger- 
mans that many of the projected visits of inspec- 
tion could only be undertaken subject to much 
difficulty and delay, if at all. There was not even 
positive assurance that a safe conduct would be 
forthcoming for the landing in Wilhelmshaven,, 
where the headquarters of the German Naval Com- 



Getting Down to Work 39 

mand were located at the moment, and where there 
had been a minimum of disorder. The wireless 
caught ominous fragments pointing to an immi- 
nent coup d'etat in Berlin, while rioting was al- 
ready taking place in Hamburg and Bremen, and 
Kiel was completely under the control of the work- 
men and soldiers. It certainly looked as though, 
the armistice agreement notwithstanding, we had 
struck Northern Germany in the closed season for 
touring. 

A ray of light in the gloom which hung over 
the ship that night came in the form of two British 
prisoners of war who managed to induce a Ger- 
man launch they had found at the quay to bring 
them off to the Hercules. Cheery souls they were, 
after all their two years of starvation and rough 
treatment in one of the worst prison camps in 
Germany. When the armistice was signed, they 
said, they had been released, given a ticket which 
was made out to carry them in the Fourth or 
** Military'' class on any German railway, and told 
they were free to go home. This appears to have 
been done at a good many prison camps, and where 
these were within a few days ' march of the West- 
ern Front, or of Holland, it probably saved a good 
deal of time over waiting for regular transport 
by the demoralized and congested railway sys- 
tems. The cruelty of this criminal evasion of re- 



40 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

sponsibility was most felt in the parts of the coun- 
try more remote from the Western Front, where 
many hundreds of miles had to be covered before 
the prisoners had any chance of getting in touch 
with friends. In the cases of most of these un- 
fortunate derelicts long delays were inevitable, 
and, not infrequently, much hardship. There was 
little interference, apparently, with the exercise 
of the travel privilege, but the almost total ab- 
sence of authoritative information concerning the 
departure of ships from Baltic ports, by which 
considerable numbers of British were repatriated 
via Denmark and Sweden, resulted in an almost 
interminable series of wanderings. 

The case of the two men I have mentioned was 
typical of the experiences undergone by prisoners 
from camps in northern or central Germany. Re- 
leased, as I have described, when the armistice was 
signed, they had broken away from their fellows, 
the bulk of whom were starting to drift toward the 
Western Front, and struck out for the North Sea 
coast, acting on the theory that navigation would 
be opened up at once, and that this route, there- 
fore, would offer the easiest and quickest way of 
getting home. Well off for money and fairly con- 
siderately treated on the food score, they found 
travelling simple enough, but extremely tedious 
and full of delays. Arriving at Emden, they 




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w 

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Getting Down to Work 41 

learned that there had been no provision whatever 
made for dispatching ships with prisoners from 
there, and that— both on account of the lack of 
shipping and the danger of navigating the still un- 
swept minejfields — there was no prospect of any- 
thing of the kind in the near future. Instead of 
crossing over the neighbouring frontier of Hol- 
land, as they might easily have done,, they pushed 
north to Bremen and Hamburg on the chance that 
there might be ships from one of these formerly 
busy ports by which they could find their way back 
to England. Disappointed again, they were about 
to go on to Kiel, when they read in a newspaper 
of the arrival of a British battleship at Wilhelms- 
haven. Eightly conjecturing that they were at 
last on the ^^home trail,'' they effected the best 
series of connections possible to the once great 
naval base, where no obstacles were placed in the 
way of their getting put off to the Hercules with- 
out delay. 

As the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council had 
been endeavouring to establish touch with the 
Commission ever since the arrival of the Hercules 
in German waters, and as the way the ** authori- 
ties" had co-operated in getting these men put off 
to the ship looked just a bit suspicious, it was only 
natural that the latter should be put through a 
very thorough examination calculated to establish 



42 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

their identity as British prisoners beyond a donbt. 
This was being proceeded with by the Commander 
and the Major of Marines in a room of the after 
superstructure, when a steward came up from the 
galley to ask what the new arrivals would like to 
have for supper. There was quite a list to choose 
from, it appears. They could have roast beef, 
said the steward, or sausage and *^ mashed," or 
steak and kidney pie, or — **Stop right there, 
mytey," cut in one of the men, raising his hand 
with the gesture of a crossings policeman halting 
the flow of the traffic. **No use goin' any fur- 
ther. ' Styke an ' kidney ' f er mine. ' ' Then, turn- 
ing to the Commander apologetically, ** Begging 
your pardon, sir, but wot was it you was askin' 
'bout wot engagement we wus captured inf **I 
don't think we need trouble any further about 
that, my man,'' replied the Commander with a 
grin. **That * styke an' kidney' marks you for 
British all right, and if you '11 vouch for your mate 
here, we'll take your word that he's on the level 
too. We'll send you home by the first mail 
destroyer, and be glad of the chance to do it. 
That won't be for a couple of days yet, but I dare 
say you'll be able to make yourself at home in 
the Hercules until then." 

As the first of the hundred or more prisoners 
for whom the Hercules ultimately acted as a 



Getting Down to Work 43 

** clearing house'* in passing home to England, 
these two men were very welcome on their own ac- 
count, but especially so for the news they brought 
of conditions ashore. It was quiet everywhere 
they had been in Northern Germany, they said. 
Nobody was starving, and where the people took 
any notice of them at all, it was — since the armis- 
tice — invariably of a friendly character. *^W'y> 
'pon my word, sir,'' said one of them, where I 
found him that night in a warm corner of one of 
the mess decks, the centre of an admiring circle of 
matelots, who were crowding in with offerings of 
everything from mugs of bitter beer to cakes of 
chocolate ; * ' 'pon my word, all you 'avc to do is 
to tyke a kyke o' perfumed soap to the beach when 
you land, an' they'll all come an' eat right out o' 
yer 'and. Wy, the gurls — " 

Although the Allied Naval Armistice Commis- 
sion could hardly be expected to smooth its way 
with **kykes o' perfumed soap," yet all these men 
had to tell, in that it went to prove how greatly the 
officers of the German Commission had (to use a 
charitable term) exaggerated the difficulties to be 
encountered in getting about ashore, was distinctly 
encouraging. Indeed, it left those of us who 
talked with them quite prepared to expect the 
^* guarantee of safety," which came off in the 
morning, with word that arrangements had been 



44 To Kiel in the ** Hercules" 

made for parties to land at once for the inspection 
of warships and the seaplane station. It even 
forecasted the message received in the course of 
the afternoon, to the effect that conditions now ap- 
peared to be favourable to the arranging of visits 
to Norderney, Borkhum, Nordholz, and the other 
seaplane and Zeppelin stations which the Allied 
Commission had expressed a desire to see. The 
Hamburg visit was still in the air, pending the re- 
ceipt of guarantees of safety, but there was no 
longer any doubt that it would be arranged, and, 
moreover, as promptly as the Commission saw fit 
to insist upon. 

For the purpose of the search of warships, and 
the inspection of merchant ships and air stations, 
the staff of the Allied Commission had been di- 
vided into several parties. The senior party, 
which was to confine its work entirely to warships 
and land fortifications, had at least one member 
of each of the Allied nationalities represented in 
the Commission. The head of it was the Flag 
Commander of the Hercules, and the technical 
duties in connection with its work devolved prin- 
cipally upon the British and American naval 
gunnery experts which it always included, and at 
least one engineer officer. 

There were two **air" parties, one for the in- 
spection of seaplane stations, and the other for 



Getting Down to Work 45 

that of airship stations. The senior flying officer 
was Brigadier-General Masterman, E.A.F., who 
was one of England's pioneers in the development 
of lighter-than-air machines, his experience dating 
back to the experiments with the ill-fated Mayfly, 
His interest was in Zeppelins, and he had the 
leadership of the party formed for the inspection 
of airship stations. This party included one other 
British officer and two Americans. 

Colonel Clark-Hall was the head of the second 
**air'' party, which had charge of the inspection 
of seaplane stations. He had flown in a seaplane 
in the first year of the war at Gallipoli, and more 
recently had directed flying operations from the 
Furious, with the Grand Fleet. Having sent oif 
. the aeroplanes whose bombs had practically wiped 
out the Zeppelin station at Tondern, near the 
Danish border, the previous summer, he had an 
especial interest in seeing at first hand the effects 
of that raid, though otherwise his interest was 
centred in seaplane stations. Two American fly- 
ing officers, and one British, completed the **sea-. 
plane station'' party. 

The Shipping Board, which had in hand the 
matter of the return to England of the two score 
and more of British ships in German harbours, 
was headed by Commodore George P. Be van, 
B.N., the Naval Adviser of the Minister of Ship- 



46 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

ping, who had distinguished himself earlier in the 
war as commander of the British trawler patrol 
in the Mediterranean. With him were associated 
Commander John Leighton, E.N.E., who had 
achieved notable success in effecting the return to 
England of the numerous British merchant ships 
in Baltic ports at the outbreak of the war, and 
Mr. Percy Turner, a prominent shipbuilder and 
Secretary to the Minister of Shippiag. The ac- 
tual inspection of the ships in German harbours 
was to be done by Commander Leighton, with such 
assistance as was needed from officers of the 
Hercules. 

It fell to the lot of the senior of the warship- 
searching party to make the first landing. As 
this party, with at least one member from each 
nationality, was more or less a ** microcosm '^ of 
the Commission itself,, it was decreed that it 
should make its visits in state, in the full pomp 
and panoply of — peace. This meant, one sup- 
posed, frock coats, cocked hats, and swords, but 
as all the former had been sent ashore, by order, 
early in the war, and as none of the Americans 
had even the latter, it was evident at once that 
there was no use competing in a dress parade with 
the Germans, who were operating at their own 
base, so to speak. The best that could be done 
was to borrow swords — from any of the ward- 



Getting Down to Work 47 

room officers chancing to have theirs along — for 
the Americans, and let it go at that. The ** Inter- 
national'' members, whose principal duty, in con- 
nection with the searches, was to walk about the 
upper decks and look dignified, managed to wear 
their swords from the time they left the Hercules 
to their return ; the others, who had really to look 
for things, and, therefore, to clamber up and down 
steel ladders of boiler rooms and the ^* trunks'* of 
turrets, after numerous annoying trippings up, 
had finally to * * stack arms ' ' in order to get on with 
their search. 

Although none of the officers of the Commission 
had taken part in the search of the German ships 
interned at Scapa, they had heard enough of their 
filthiness and lack of discipline to be prepared to 
encounter the same things when the inspection of 
the ships still remaining in home waters was un- 
dertaken. In spite of this, the conditions — the 
dirtiness, the slothfulness, the apparent utter dis- 
regard of the men for such few of their officers 
as still remained — were everywhere much worse 
than had been anticipated. This may well be ac- 
counted for by the fact that the surrendered ships 
were manned entirely by volunteers, and these, 
naturally, being the men less revolutionary in 
spirit and more amenable to discipline, had taken 
better care of themselves and their quarters than 



48 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

those who remained behind. At any rate, every 
one of the ships remaining to the German Navy 
was an offence to the eye, and most of them to the 
nose as well. If it was true, as had been said, that 
sloth and filth are the high hand-maidens of Bol- 
shevism, there is little doubt that these twin trol- 
lops were in a position to hand the dregs of the 
ex-Kaiser's fleet over to their mistress any day- 
she wanted it. 

We had, as yet, no definite hint of what attitude 
the men of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council 
were going to take toward parties landed to carry 
out the work of the Allied Commission, and that 
was one of the things which it was expected this 
first search of the warships in the Wilhelmshaven 
dockyard would reveal. The beginning was not 
auspicious, for in the very first ship visited the 
whole of the remaining crew were found loitering 
indolently about the decks, in direct contravention 
of the clause in the armistice which provided that 
all men should be sent ashore during the visits of 
Allied searching parties. The captain, on being 
appealed to, shrugged his shoulders and said that 
he was quite helpless. *^I ordered them to leave 
half an hour ago," he explained to the inter- 
preter, *^and here they are still. I have no au- 
thority over them, as you see; so what is there to 
do? I am sorry, but you see the position I am in. 



Getting Down to Work 49 

I trust you will understand how humiliating a one 
it is for an officer of the Imperial' ' — he checked 
himself at the word KaiserlicJie, and added merely, 
** German Navy.*' 

**And, believe me, it was humiliating," said one 
of the American officers in telling of the incident 
later. *^I had to keep reminding myself that the 
man was a brother officer of the swine that sank 
the Lusitania, and so many hospital ships, to stop 
myself from telling him how gol darned sorry I 
was for any one that had got let in for a mess like 
that." 

The situation was scarcely less embarrassing 
for the officer at the head of the Allied party than 
for the Germans. Fortunately the Flag Com- 
mander was fully equal to the emergency. **If 
these men are not out on the dock in ten minutes, ' ' 
he said to the captain, * * I shall have no alternative 
but to return at once to the Hercules and report 
that the facilities for search stipulated in the 
armistice have not been granted me." Glancing 
at his wrist-watch, he sauntered over to the other 
side of the deck. 

The effect of the words (which appeared to have 
been understood by some of the men standing near 
even in English) was galvanic. Blue- jackets were 
streaming down the gangways before the orders 
had been passed on to them by their officers, and 



50 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

the ship, save for a few cooks in the galley, was 
emptied well within the time-limit assigned. It 
had evidently been an attempt npon the part of 
the men to show contempt for their officers, and 
was not intended to interfere with the work of the 
searching party. Although we observed countless 
instances of indiscipline in one form or another, 
on no subsequent occasion did it appear in a way 
calculated to annoy or delay one of the Allied par- 
ties. On the contrary, indeed, the men — and espe- 
cially the representatives of the Workmen *s and 
Soldiers' Council — were almost invariably more 
than willing to do anything to help. This spirit, 
it is needless to say, made progress much faster 
and easier, and a continuance of it boded hope- 
fully for the completion of the Commission's pro- 
gram within the limit of the original period of 
armistice. 

It seems to have been the strong — and, I have 
no doubt, entirely sincere — desire of both the Ger- 
man naval officers and the members of the Work- 
men's and Soldiers' Council to get the inspection 
over and the Allied Commission out of the way 
that led to a co-operation between the two which 
I can hardly conceive as existing in connection 
with their other relations. The representatives 
of the Workmen and Soldiers appeared quite rec- 
onciled to the ruling of the Commission that the 



Getting Down to Work 51 

latter was to have no direct dealings with them^ 
and they exhibited no evidences of ill-feeling over 
the failure of their attempts to establish such rela- 
tions. The Naval authorities and the Council had 
evidently come to an agreement by which the lat- 
ter were to be allowed to have a representative — 
* ^ watching ' ' but not * * talking ' ' — with every Allied 
party landing, in return for which privilege the 
Council undertook to prevent any interference 
from the men remaining in ships or air stations 
visited. Later, when journeys by railway were 
undertaken, and a guarantee of freedom from 
molestation by the civilian population was re- 
quired, a second Workmen's and Soldiers' repre- 
sentative — a sort of a ** plain clothes" detective — 
was added. Both white-banded men were there 
to help, not to interfere. Indeed, the men seemed 
fully to realize the need of a higher mentality than 
their own in the conduct of the more or less com- 
plicated negotiations with the Allied representa- 
tives, and were therefore content to support their 
officers in an attempt to make the best of what was 
a sorry situation for both. 

A slight hitch which occurred in the arrange- 
ments of the ^^ seaplane station" party one morn- 
ing, when the officer who was to have accompanied 
it failed to turn up on the landing at the appointed 
hour, showed how slender was the thread by which 



52 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

the authority of the once proud and domineering 
German naval officer hung. After cooling their 
heels in the slush of the dockyard for half an hour, 
the party returned to the Hercules to await an 
explanation. This came an hour later, when the 
officer in question, very red in the face, came 
bumping up to the gangway in a madly driven mo- 
tor-boat, and clambered up to the quarter-deck to 
make his apologies. 

**I am very sorry, '^ he ejaculated volubly, ^^but 
it was not understood by the Arheiten und Sol- 
datenrat that it was I who was to go with you to- 
day. In consequence, the permit to wear my 
sword and epaulettes and other markings of an 
officer was not sent to me, and so I could not be 
allowed to travel by the tramway until I had made 
known the trouble by telephone and had the per- 
mit sent. It was even very difficult for me to be 
allowed to speak over the telephone. You must 
see how very hard life is for us officers as things 
are now." 

It appears that even the officers going about 
with the Allied naval sub-commissions were only 
allowed to wear their designating marks for the 
occasion, and that, unless a special permit from 
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council was shown, 
these had to be removed as soon as they went 
ashore. The constant ** self-pity'' which the offi- 



Getting Down to Work 53 

cers kept showing in the matter of their humili- 
ating predicament was the one thing needed to 
extinguish the sparks of sympathy which would 
keep flaring up in one 's breast unless one stopped 
to think how thoroughly deserved — how poetically 
just — it all was. 

With one or two exceptions, all the best of Ger- 
many's capital ships were known to have been 
surrendered, and this applied to light cruisers and 
destroyers as well. The U-boat situation was 
somewhat obscure, but it was supposed — incor- 
rectly, as transpired later — that a fairly clean 
sweep of the best of the under-water craft had 
also been made. The most interesting ships which 
the Allied Commission expected to see in German 
w^aters were the battleship Baden, sister of the 
surrendered Bayern, and the battle-cruiser Mack- 
ensen, sister of the surrendered Hindenhurg, 
The Regenshurg and Konigsherg, which had been 
left to the Germans to **get about in,*' were also 
considered worthy of study at close range as ex- 
amples of the latest type of German light cruiser. 
The Mackensen, still far from completed, was in a 
yard on the Elbe at Hamburg. The others were 
inspected at Wilhelmshaven. 

I think I am speaking conservatively when I 
say that all of the Allied officers who saw them 
from the inside were distinctly disappointed in 



54 To Kiel in the *' Hercules" 

even these most modern examples of German na- 
val construction. After the extremely good fight 
that practically every one of them — from the Em- 
den and Konigsherg and the ships of Von Spec's 
squadron at the Falklands to the battle-cruisers 
of Von Hipper at Jutland — had put up when it 
was once drawn into action, it was only natural 
to expect that some radical departures in con- 
struction, armament, and gunnery control would 
be revealed on closer acquaintance. This did not 
prove to be the case, though it is only fair to say 
that, in the matter of gunnery control, there was 
little opportunity to pass judgment, owing to the 
fact that, in every instance, the Germans — as they 
had a perfect right to do — had removed all the in- 
struments and gear calculated to give any indica- 
tion of the character of the installation. 

The German ships were found to be extremely 
well built, especially in the solidity of construction 
of their hulls, the fact that they were not intended 
to be lived in by a full ship's company all of the 
time making it easy to multiply bulkheads and dis- 
pense with doors. But there was nothing new in 
this fact to those who knew the amount of ham- 
mering the Seydlitz and Derfftinger had survived 
at Dogger Bank and Jutland. Even so, however, 
there was nothing to indicate that these latest of 
German ships would stand more punishment than 



Getting Down to Work 55 

any unit of the Grand Fleet after the stiffening 
all British capital ships received as a consequence 
of what was learned at Jutland. 

In several respects it was evident that the Ger- 
mans had merely become tardy converts to Brit- 
ish practice. The tripod mast, which dates back 
something like a decade in British capital ships, 
and which has, since the war, been built in light 
cruisers and even destroyer leaders, was only 
adopted by the Germans with the laying down of 
the Bayern and Hindenhurg. Similarly, the 
armament^ — both main and secondary — of the re- 
spective classes of battleship and battle-cruiser 
to which these two ships give the name, is a frank 
admission on the part of the Germans that the 
British were five years ahead of them in the mat- 
ter of guns. 

Gunnery control, the one thing above all others 
which the British Navy was interested in when it 
came to an intimate study of the German ships, is, 
unfortunately, one of the things upon which the 
least light has been shed. The German, since he 
had to disarm, did the job with characteristic Teu- 
tonic thoroughness. The transmitting stations in 
all of the modern ships — the one point where there 
would have been a great concentration of special 
instruments of control — looked like unfurnished 
rooms in their emptiness. So, too, the foretops 



56 To Kiel in the '' Hercules" 

and what must have been the director towers. 
One moot point may, however, be regarded as set- 
tled. There have been many who maintained that, 
since the German fire was almost ii^ivariably ex- 
tremely accurate in the opening stages of an ac- 
tion, and tended to fall off rapidly after the ship 
came under fire herself, the enemy gunnery con- 
trol involved the use of a very elaborate and 
highly complicated installation of special instru- 
ments, many of which were too delicate to stand 
the stress of continued action. The British and 
American officers who went over the latest of the 
enemy's ships, however, are agreed that all the 
evidence available points to this not being the 
case — that the German gunnery control, on the 
contrary, was undoubtedly as simple as it was 
efficient, and that the fact that it had not stood up 
well in action was probably more due to human 
than mechanical failure. 

It is considered as by no means improbable that 
the good shooting of the German ships was largely 
traceable to the excellence of their range-finders 
and the special training of those who used them. 
Whether it is true or not that France and Eng- 
land have succeeded since the war in making opti- 
cal glass equal to that of Jena, there is no doubt 
that the latter was superior in the first years of 
the war. The German ships unquestionably had 



Getting Down to Work 57 

more accurate range-finders than did the British, 
and it is also known now that the Germans took 
great care in testing the eyesight of the men em- 
ployed to handle these instruments, and that much 
attention was given to their training. It is be- 
lieved that upon these simple points alone, rather 
than upon the use of a highly complicated system 
of control, the admitted excellence of German gun- 
nery was based. There is no reason to believe 
that they had anything better than the British for 
laying down the **rate of change,'' and keeping 
the enemy under fire once he had been straddled. 
Although it was known to the British sailor in 
a general sort of way that the Germans only spent 
a comparatively small part of their time aboard 
their ships, the tangible evidence of this remark- 
able state of affairs — in the vast blocks of bar- 
racks at Wilhelmshaven and the very crude, in- 
adequate living quarters in even the most modern 
of the ships searched — gave him only less of a 
shock, and aroused in him only less contempt, than 
did the filth and indiscipline of the German sailors. 
The German officer who assured one of the search- 
ing parties that their ships were made **to fight 
in, not to live in, ' ' told the literal truth, and it only 
accentuates the bitter irony of the fact that, when 
finally they refused to fight, they had to begin to 
be lived in willy-nilly. 



58 To Kiel in the '' Hercules" 

**You can't tell me there isn't a God in Israel, 
now that weVe got the Huns at Scapa living in 
their own ships,'' said an officer on coming off to 
the Hercules one night after his first day spent in 
going over some of the remnants of the German 
Navy at Wilhelmshaven. That same thought is 
awakening no end of comfort in the breast of many 
a British naval officer this winter, who would oth- 
erwise have been down on his luck for having still 
to stand to his guns after the war was over. In 
a previous chapter I have told how we intercepted 
a wireless from Admiral Von Eeuter, saying that 
he had *'gone sick" at Scapa and asking to be 
relieved. That was not the last by any means 
that we were to hear of the *^ hardships" of life 
in those German ** fighting ships" at good old 
Scapa. The veritable howls of protest rising 
from the Orkneys were echoing in Wilhelmshaven 
and Kiel during all the time the Commission spent 
in German waters. Some mention of the **sad 
plight" of the German sailors there was made at 
every conference, and it was at the final one, I be- 
lieve, that Admiral Goette said that the ** cruel 
conditions" under which the men in the interned 
ships were being compelled to live at Scapa Flow 
was alone responsible for the fact that it had 
been so far impossible to find a crew to man the 
Baden, which he had agreed some days previously 



Getting Down to Work 59 

should be delivered in place of the uncompleted 
Machensen. 

Except for the several modern ships I have 
mentioned, the search of the naval units remaia- 
mg in German ports resolved itself into a more 
or less monotonous clambering over a lot of ob- 
solete hulks — from many of which even the guns 
had been removed — to see that no munitions re- 
mained in their magazines. There was always the 
same inevitable filth to be waded through, always 
the same gloweringly sullen — or, worse still by 
way of variation, cringingly obsequious — officers 
to be endured. The sullen ones usually improved 
when they found that no ** indignities'' were to be 
heaped upon them, and that they had only to an- 
swer a few questions and show the way round; 
but you had to keep a weather eye lifting for the 
obsequious ones to prevent their helping you up 
ladders by steadying your elbow, rubbing imag- 
inary spots of grease off your monkey jacket, and 
— the invariable finale — offering you a limp, moist 
hand to shake at parting. The latter, like the 
ruthless U-boat warfare, was dangerous princi- 
pally on account of its unexpectedness. When 
adequate ** counter measures'' were devised 
against it, it became less threatening, but had 
always to be looked out for. I don't recall, 
though, hearing any one confess to having been 



60 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

** surprised^' into shaking hands after the first 
day or two. 

The search of the warships at Wilhelmshaven 
was finished in a couple of days, while the few old 
cruisers and destroyers at Emden were inspected 
in the three hours between going and returning 
railway journeys, taking about the same length of 
time. At Hamburg and Bremen there were prin- 
cipally merchant ships and U-boats, and the search 
of — and for — ^both of these is a story of its own. 
The remainder of the work on the North Sea side 
consisted in journeys — ^by train, motor, destroyer, 
or launch — to, and the inspection of, Grermany's 
principal seaplane and airship stations, and of 
these highly interesting visits I shall write in later 
chapters. 



ni 



FIEST IMPRESSIONS OF *' STARVING GERMANY '* 



Our visit to the island of Norderney was a me- 
morable one for two reasons — first, because we 
inspected there what is not only the largest of 
Germany's seaplane stations, but also probably 
the largest and best equipped in all Europe ; and 
second, because the journey there gave us, all in 
the course of a few hours, our first after-the-war 
glimpse of a German city, German countryside, a 
German railway, and what had once been a Ger- 
man summer resort. The couple of days spent 
in the search of the German warships had given 
no opportunity whatever to see anything more 
than an interminable succession of dirty mess 
decks, empty magazines, disgruntled officers, slo- 
venly sailors, and cluttered docks. Steeples and 
factory chimneys and the loom of lofty barracks 
located Wilhelmshaven without revealing it. The 
steady dribble of pedestrians along the water- 
front road might have been made up of Esquimaux 
or Kanakas, for all that we could see. One won- 
dered if their emaciated frames were dressed in 
paper suits, and if their tottering feet clumped 
along in wooden clogs. The excellence of the ma- 

61 



62 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

terial of the untidy garb of the sailors, and the 
well-fed appearance of the latter, seemed to point 
to the contrary. But still one couldn't be sure. 
We knew that Germany had never made the mis- 
take of under-feeding or under-clothing her sol- 
diers and sailors, and that where any one had to go 
without it was always the civilians who suffered. 
We wanted to see how those civilians had stood 
the ** starvation blockade'' against which they had 
protested so loudly, and now — ^through our visits 
to the various naval air stations — the veil was 
about to be lifted. 

The fog — ^the interminable fog which never 
lifted for more than a few hours at a time during 
the whole of our three weeks in German waters — 
banked thick above the green stream of the swift- 
running tide as our picket boat shoved off from 
the Hercules at eight o'clock that morning, and 
there was just sufficient visibility to pick up the 
successive buoys marking the course to the en- 
trance to the basin. Eunning in just ahead of an 
antique torpedo-boat with the usual indolent sail- 
ors slouching along its narrow decks, we stepped 
out upon the longest pontoon landing I have ever 
seen. Twenty yards wide, and over a hundred in 
length, it was constructed so as to rise and fall 
with flow and ebb of what must have been a very 
considerable tide. 



Impressions of ^ ^ Starving Germany ' ' 63 

No one being on the landing to receive the 
party, we started walking in toward its shore- 
ward end. The men on the torpedo-boats stared 
at US with insolent curiosity, without the sugges- 
tion of the shuffle of a foot toward standing at 
attention as even the ** brassiest*' of our several 
** brass-hats" passed by; but from the galley of a 
tug moored on the opposite side the cook grinned 
wide-mouthed welcome. She was a fine, upstand- 
ing, double-braided blonde of generous propor- 
tions, and the bulging bulk of her overflowed the 
narrow companion-way into which she was wedged 
as the raw red flesh of her arm swelled over the 
line of its rolled-up sleeve. 

**No traces of under-feeding in that figure,'' 
said a British flying officer, with the critically im- 
personal glance he would have given to the wings 
of a machine he was about to take the air in. 
**No," acquiesced one of the Americans; '*and 
there's no fear of scJirecJclichkeit in that face, 
either. Pipe that ^welcome-to-our-f air-city' grin, 
won't you. Could you beat it for a display of 
ivories ? ' ' 

And so we came to ' * starving Germany. ' ' 

A bustling young flying lieutenant came hurry- 
ing to meet us at the shore end of the landing, 
apologizing for his tardiness by saying that it was 
due to * ^ trouble about the cars. ' ' After seeing the 



64 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

motley collection of motors which awaited us out- 
side the gate, one had no difficulty in believing 
him; indeed, it was hard to see how there could 
be anything but *^ trouble about the cars.'' The 
best of them was an ancient Mercedes, the pneu- 
matic tyres of which, worn down to the treads, 
looked as though they would puncture on the 
smooth face of a paving stone. Two others— one 
of them looked like a sort of *^ perpetuation'' of a 
collision between a Daimler lorry and a Benz 
runabout, and the other was an out-and-out mon- 
grel with no visible marks of ancestry — had the 
remains of what had once been solid tyres of ersatz 
rubber bound to the rims with bits of tarred rope. 
The fourth and last was ersatz throughout. That 
is to say, it seemed to be made — from its paper 
upholstery to its steel-spring tyres — of ** other 
things" than those from which the normal cars 
one has always known are made of. 

I had heard much of those spring tyres, so, 
taking advantage of the general rush for the pneu- 
matically tyred Mercedes and the ** rheumatic ally" 
tyred nondescripts, I lifted an oiled-paper curtain 
and plumped down on the woven paper cushion of 
old '^Ersatz.'' As the other cars were quite filled 
up with the remainder of our party, the escorting 
German officer came in with me. 

**The imitation rubber," he began slowly and 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 65 

precisely, ** makes many good things, but not the 
good motor tyres. It is resilient, but not elastic. 
It will stand the pushing but not the pulling. It 
is not strong, not tough, like the rubber from the 
tree. Ah, the English were very lucky always 
to have the real rubber. If that had been so with 
Germany — '' 

Just to what extent a continuous supply of real 
rubber would have modified the situation for Ger- 
many I did not learn, for we started up just then, 
and the rest of the sentence was lost in the mighty 
whirl of sound in which we were engulfed. The 
best comparison I can make of the noise that car 
made — as heard from within — is to a sustained 
crescendo of a super-Jazz band, the cymbals of 
which were represented by the clankity-clank of 
the component parts of the steel tyres banging 
against each other and the pavement, and the 
drums of which were the rhythmic thud-thud of 
the ersatz body on the lifeless springs. Although 
the other cars were rattling heavily on their own 
account, the ear-rending racket of the steel-tyres 
dominated the situation completely, and at the 
first turn I caught an impressionistic blend of blue 
and khaki uniforms as their occupants leaned out 
to see what was in pursuit of them. 

*^It was unlike any sound I ever heard before,'^ 
said one of them in describing it later. *^It was 



66 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

positively Bolshevik !'* All in all, I think ** Bol- 
shevik'' is more fittingly descriptive than ^* Jazz- 
band-ic." It carries a suggestion of ^^savage- 
ness'' quite lacking in the latter, and *^ savage" 
that raucous tornado of sound surely was. I 
could never allow myself to contemplate the pri- 
mal chaos one of the American officers tried to 
conjure up by asking what it would be like to 
hear two motor convoys of steel-tyred trucks pass- 
ing each other during a bombardment. The only 
sensible comment I heard on that question was 
from the officer who cut in with, ** Please tell me 
how you'd know there was a bombardment?" 

There was one thing that steel-tyred car did 
well, though, and that was to respond to its emer- 
gency brake. The occasion for the use of the lat- 
ter arose when a turning bridge was suddenly 
opened fifteen or twenty yards ahead of the lead- 
ing car, imposing upon the latter the necessity of 
stopping dead inside that distance or taking a 
header into a canal. The Mercedes, skating airily 
along on its wobbly tyres, managed it by inches 
•after streaking the pavement with two broad belts 
of the last *^real tree rubber" left in Germany. 
The leading nondescript — ^the Benz-Daimler blend 
— gave the Mercedes a sharp bump before losing 
the last of its momentum, and all but the last of 
its fluttering *^rope-er5a^^-rubber" tyres, while 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 67 

its mate only came to a standstill after skidding 
sideways on its rims. But my steel- tyred chariot, 
the instant its emergency brake was thrown on, 
simply set its teeth into the red brick pavement, 
and, spitting sparks like a dragon, stopped as dead 
as though it had run against a stone wall. My 
companion and I, having nothing to set our teeth 
into, simply kept going right on. I, luckily, only 
butted the chauffeur, who — evidently because the 
same thing had happened to him before — took it 
all in good part ; but the dapper young officer, who 
planted the back of his head squarely between 
the shoulder blades of the august Workmen 's and 
Soldiers' representative riding beside the driver, 
got a good swearing at for not aiming lower and 
allowing the back of the seat to absorb his inertia. 
Quite apart from the sparks kicked up by the tyres, 
and the stars shaken down by my jolt, it was a 
highly illuminating little incident. 

We ran more slowly after we crossed the bridge 
— which also meant more quietly, or rather, less 
noisily — and for the first time I noticed what a 
new world we seemed to have come into since we 
left the immediate vicinity of the docks. It was 
not so much that we were now passing down a 
street of small shops, where before we had been 
among warehouses and factories, as the difference 
in appearance and spirit of the people. No one — 



68 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

not even the lahourer going to his morning work — 
had anything of the slovenly hang-dog air of the 
sailors we had seen in the ships and abont the 
dockyard. The streets and the shops were clean, 
and even the meanest of the people neatly and 
comfortably dressed. We had come out of the 
atmosphere of revolution into that of ordinary 
work-a-day Germany. 

As we rounded a corner and came clattering 
into the main street of the city, the change was 
even more marked. At first blush there was 
hardly a suggestion of war, or of war 's aftermath. 
The big shop-windows were full of goods, with 
here and there the forerunning red-and-green 
decorations of the coming holidays. Here was an 
art shop 's display of etchings and coloured prints, 
there a haberdasher's stock of scarves and shirts 
and gloves. Even a passing glance, it is true, re- 
vealed a prominently displayed line of false shirt 
fronts; but, then, your German always was par- 
tial to ^ * dickeys. ' ' A florist 's window, in which a 
fountain plashed above a basin of water-lilies, was 
golden with splendid chrysanthemums, and in the 
milliner's window hard by a saffron-plumed con- 
fection of ultra-marine held high revel with a 
riotous thing of royal purple plush. 

Noting my eager interest in the gay window 
panorama, my companion, leaning close to my 



Impressions of *' Starving Germany" 69 

ear to make himself heard above the clatter of the 
tyres, shouted jerkily with the jolt of the car, 
**We are fond of the bright colours, we Germans, 
and we make the very good dyes. I think you 
have missed very much the German dyes since the 
war, and will now be very glad of the chance to 
have them again. We have learned much during 
the war, and they are now better than ever before. 
We laugh very much when we capture the French 
soldier with the faded blue uniform, for then we 
know that the French cannot make the dye that 
will hold its colour. But the German — '' 

** Waiting with the goods," I said to myself as 
I drew away from the dissertation to watch a 
tramcar disgorging its load at a crossing. 

We were now runniug through the heart of 
Wilhelmshaven, and it was the early office crowd 
that was thronging the streets. How well they 
were dressed, and how well fed they looked! 
There were no hollow eyes or emaciated forms in 
that crowd. One who has seen famines in China 
and India knows the hunger look, the hunger pal- 
lor, the hunger apathy. There is no mistaking 
them. But we had not seen any of them in the 
German ships or dockyards, we did not see them 
that day in Wilhelmshaven, and we were not des- 
tined to see them in Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, or 
anywhere else we went in the course of our many 



70 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

hundreds of miles of travel in Northern Germany. 
So far as Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Schleswig- 
Holstein were concerned, I have no hesitation in 
saying that the starvation whine, which arose from 
the moment the ink was dry upon the armistice 
agreement and which still persists, was sheer — 
to be charitable, let us say — panic. 

Presently, as we began to pass some huge 
masses of buildings which, four or five stories in 
height, appeared to run on through two or three 
blocks of the not unattractive park-like grounds 
with which they were surrounded, my companion, 
indicating them with a proud wave of his hand, 
started speaking again. I could not hear him 
distinctly — for we were speeding up faster now, 
and consequently making more noise — ^but I 
thought I caught the drift of what he was trying 
to say. 

**Ja, ja," I roared back. *^Ich verstehe sehr 
gut. Der naval barracks. Der German High Sea 
Fleet Base. ' ' I think that was hardly the way he 
was trying to put it, but his vigorous nod of assent 
showed that I had at least gathered the sense of 
his observations. As we slowed down at the next 
corner he put me completely right by saying, ' * Not 
for the ships themselves, the big barracks, but for 
the men when the ships were here. I think you 
make a joke.'' I admitted the shrewd impeach- 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 71 

ment with, a grin, but hardly thought it necessary 
to add that I was afraid he had still missed the 
best part of the joke. He was a diverting lad, that 
young flying officer, and he told me many interest- 
ing things in the course of the day. Some of them 
were true, as subsequent events or observations 
proved ; but one of them at least was a calculated 
and deliberate lie, told with the purpose of in- 
ducing one of the **air'' parties to give up the 
plan it had formed of visiting a certain station. 
I will set down that significant little incident in its 
proper place. 

Although, as we learned later, the fact that a 
party from the Allied Commission was to land and 
pass through the city that day had been carefully 
withheld from the people, the latter exhibited very 
little surprise at the appearance of officers in uni- 
forms which they seemed to recognize at once as 
foreign. They had been instructed that they were 
to make no demonstration of any kind when Allied 
officers were encountered in the streets, and, do- 
cile as ever, they carried out the order to the 
letter. A mild, unresentful curiosity would per- 
haps best describe the attitude of all the people 
who saw us that day, both in Wilhelmshaven and 
at the country stations. 

The fact that many of the streets were dressed 
with flags and greenery, and that all of the chil- 



72 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

dren, both boys and girls, trudging along to school 
carried the red, white, and black emblem in their 
hands, suggested to me at first that it was part of 
a patriotic display, a sort of flaunting the new- 
found freedom in the face of the ^ ' invader. ' ' But 
my companion assured me that the decorations 
were in honour of the expected arrival home of 
two regiments of Wilhelmshaven Marines from 
the Front. ^*We have been en fete for a week 
now in hourly expectation of their coming, and 
every day the children have put on their best 
clothes and carried flags in their hands. But the 
railway service is very bad, and always are they 
disappointed. You will see the arch of welcome 
at the railway station. Wilhelmshaven is very 
proud of its Marine soldiers.*' 

The * * arch ' ' at the station turned out to be the 
evergreen and bunting-decorated entrance to a 
long shed set with tables, at which refreshments 
were to be served to the returning warriors. It 
was surmounted with a shield bearing the words 
**Willkommen Soldaten," and an eight-line stanza 
of verse which I did not have time to copy. The 
gist of it was that the soldiers were welcomed 
home to * * Work and Liberty. ' ' It was thoroughly 
bad verse, said one of our interpreters, but the 
sentiments were — for Germany — *^ restrained and 
dignified." There was nothing about the *^un- 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 73 

beaten soldiers," of whom we had been reading as 
welcomed home in Berlin and other parts of Ger- 
many. 

There was a small crowd at the station entrance 
as our cars drove up, but it parted quietly and 
made way for us to pass inside. One or two 
sailors stood at attention and saluted — ^though 
whether German or Allied officers it was impossi- 
ble to tell — and several civilians bowed solemnly 
and took oif their hats. One of these reached out 
and made temporary captive an irreverent street 
gamin who — purely in a spirit of fun, apparently 
— started *^ goose-stepping'^ along in our wake. 
A bevy of minxes of the shop-girl type giggled 
sputteringly, getting much apparent amusement 
the while out of pretending to keep each other 
quiet. One gaudily garbed pair, standing easily 
at gaze in the middle of the waiting-room, stared 
brazenly and ogled frank invitation. An austere 
dame — she might have been an opulent naval cap- 
tain's frau — drew a languid hand from what 
looked like a real ermine muif to lift a tortoise- 
shell lorgnette and pass us one by one in critical 
review. Then the old ticket-puncher, touching his 
cap as though he had recognized the party as the 
Board of Directors on a surreptitious tour of in- 
spection, passed us through the gate and on the 
platform and our waiting train. 



74 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

Our special consisted of a luggage van and a 
passenger coach, drawn by an engine in a very 
advanced state of what appeared to be neglect. 
Though all its parts were there, these, except 
where rubbed clean by friction, were thick with 
rust and scaled with flaking paint. The worst 
trouble, however, seemed to come from lack of 
lubrication, for in the places where every other 
locomotive I had seen before was dripping with 
oil, this one showed only caked graphite and hard, 
dry steel. While there is little doubt that the 
Germans made a point of turning out their worst 
engines and motor cars for the use of the Allied 
sub-commissions in order to give an impression 
that things were really in a desperate way with 
them, it is still beyond question that their railway 
stock deteriorated greatly during the war, and 
that a shortage of lubricating oils was one of 
their very worst difficulties. 

The passenger coach was equally divided be- 
tween first- and second-class compartments. En- 
tering at the second-class end, our party distrib- 
uted itself between the first two compartments 
reached. By the time one of the several German 
officers who had now joined us pointed out the 
big figure **2'' on the windows, we were so com- 
fortably settled that no one deemed it worth 
while to move. As a matter of fact, on the Ger- 



Impressions of '^Starving Germany" 75 

man railways, with their four or five classes, 
there is gentler gradation between class and class 
than in France or England ; and between first and 
second — save that the former is upholstered in 
dark-red plush and the latter in light-green — the 
diiference is hardly noticeable. The main dif- 
ference is, I believe, in the price, and the fact that 
only six are allowed in the first-class against eight 
in the second. We extracted a good deal of 
amusement out of the fact that the several Work- 
men's and Soldiers' representatives made no mis- 
take, and lost no time, in marking a first-class com- 
partment for their own. 

We had been somewhat perplexed on our ar- 
rival at the station to note that the two uniformed 
Workmen's and Soldiers' representatives had 
been joined by two civilians, each wearing the 
white arm-band of the revolutionary council. But 
presently one of the latter, hat in hand, came to 
the door of our compartment to explain. The 
naval authorities, he said, had requested that the 
Workmen and Soldiers should guarantee the 
safety of all Allied parties landing from civilian 
attack, and in consequence he had been sent along 
as a *^ hostage." At least the German term he 
used was one which could be translated as host- 
age, but after talking it over we came to the con- 
clusion that the man's role was more analogous to 



76 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

that of a ** plain clothes '* special policeman. 
There was one of these men attached to every 
party that made a train journey on the North Sea 
side (all stations in the Baltic littoral were reached 
by destroyer, so that no ** protection'^ from the 
civihan population was necessary), and they were 
neither of any trouble nor — so far as I was ever 
able to discern — any use. 

Leaving a handful of morning papers behind 
him as a propitiatory offering, our ** hostage" 
bowed himself out of the door and backed off 
down the corridor — still bowing — to rejoin his 
colleagues in the first-class section of the car. In 
the quarter of an hour there was still to wait be- 
fore the line was clear for the departure of our 
train, we had our first chance for a peep into 
Germany through the window of the Press. 

The four-page sheets turned out to be copies of 
Vorwdrts, the Kolnische Volkszeitung und 
Hand els -Blatt, the Weser Zeitung, of Bremen, the 
Wilhelmshavener Tagehlait, and the Repuhlik, 
The latter styled itself the Sozialdemohratisches 
Organ fur Oldenburg und Ostfriesland, and the 
Mitteilungsblatt der Arheiter und Soldatenrdte. 
It claimed to be in its thirty-second year, but 
admitted that all this time, except the fortnight 
since the revolution, it had borne the name of 
Oldenhurger Volkshlatt. It had little in the way 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany'' 77 

of news from either the outside world or the in- 
terior, the few columns which it gave up to this 
purpose being filled with accounts of the formation 
of republics in various other provinces, and at- 
tacks upon members of the acting Government 
in Berlin. Evidently under some sort of orders, 
it mentioned the arrival of the Hercules at Wil- 
helmshaven without comment. A socialistic sheet 
of Hamburg, which turned up the next day, showed 
less restraint in this connection, for it stated that 
the Allied Commission had altered its decision not 
to meet the Workmen's and Soldiers' representa- 
tives, and that negotiations were now in progress 
in which the latter were taking a prominent part. 
Tangible evidence of the truth of this statement, 
it added, might be found in the fact that dele- 
gates from the Workmen and Soldiers accom- 
panied Allied parties whenever they landed. 
Vorwdrts tried to convey the same false impres- 
sion to its readers, but rather less brazenly. The 
Kolnische VolJcszeitung printed a dispatch from 
London, in which the Daily Mail was quoted as 
supporting the ^^australischen Premierministers 
Hughes' " demand of an indemnity of '' acht mil- 
Harden Pfund Sterling' ' from Germany, and pro- 
ceeded to prove in the course of an impassioned 
leader of two columns why the demanding of any 
indemnity at all was ia direct violation of the 



78 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

pledged word of the AlHes, to say nothing of Wil- 
son's Fourteen Points. A significant circum- 
stance was the inclusion in each paper of a part of 
a column of comment on the movement of prices 
of ^ ^ LandesproduJcte' ^ on the American markets. 

The advertisements, which took up rather more 
than half of each sheet, proved by long odds more 
interesting than the news. These were quite in 
best *^ peace time'' style. The Metropol-Variete 
{Neu renoviert!) informed all and sundry that 
'^Vier elegante junge Damen!'^ disported them- 
selves in its ^'KabareW every evening. The 
head-line of the great ^^ Spezialitdten Programm^' 
in the theatre was ^'Die Gross e Sensation: Mar- 
tini Szenifj genannt der ^ Aushrecher-Konig' !'* A 
number in the Metropolis program which appealed 
to us more than all the others, however, was one 
which was featured further down the list, for 
there, sandwiched between ^^ Kitty Deanos und 
Paetner, Kunstschutzen/' and **Hans Eomans, 
Liedersanger/' appeared *^ Little Willy, Tra- 
pez-Volant/^ 

**And all the time we thought he was in Hol- 
land, ' ' dryly commented the American officer who 
made the discovery. 

One could not help wondering respecting the 
* * etymology " of ^ ^ Little Willy, ' ' and whether that 
** Flying Trapezist" knew that he bore the favour- 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 79 

ite Allied nickname for His ex-Royal and Imperial 
Highness, Frederick Wilhelm HohenzoUern, 
Crown Prince of Germany, etc., etc. 

Evidence that Hun * * piracy ' ' had not been con- 
fined to their U-boats was unearthed in the dis- 
covery that the Adler-Theatre of Bremen adver- 
tised two performances of **Die Modekne Eva'* 
for that very day — Heute Sonntag! **I ran 
across the chap who wrote ^The Modern Eve' 
somewhere out California way,'* said the same 
American who had spoken before. * *He was some 
bore, too, take it from me ; but he never deserved 
anything as bad as this, for the show itself was 
pretty nifty," and he began humming, in ex- 
temporaneously translated German the words of 
*^ Good-bye Everybody,'' the popular >* song hit" 
from *^The Modern Eve." 

It was a Berlin theatre which advertised ^*2 
Vorstellungen 2" of '* Hamlet," which ended up 
the notice with ^ ' Eauchen Stkeng Vekbotei^ ! " in 
large type. *^If they burn the same stuff in Ber- 
lin that our Workmen and Soldier friends in the 
first-class are putting up that smoke barrage in 
the corridor with," said an airship officer, *4t 
would have to be a case of ^Rauchen Streng Ver- 
hoten' or gas masks." 

A number of booksellers advertised long lists 
of ^'Neue Werke/' but one searched these in vain 



80 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

for any of the notorious polemics directed against 
the Allies, or yet for the writings of any of the 
great protagonists of the ^ * Deutschland Ueber 
Alles'^ movement. Most of them appeared to 
be ^^ Romances'' or out-and-out *^ Thrillers.'' 
Bachem, of Koln, described ^^Der Meister'^ as 
^^Der Roman eines Spiritisten^\' ^^Wettertannen^' 
as a ^^Tiroler Roman aus der Gegenwart von Hans 
SchroW^; ^^Wenn Irland dich rufV^ as ^^Ber 
Roman eines Fliegers^' ; and ^'Der hlutige 
Behrpfennig'^ as '^Erzdhlung aus dem Lehen 
eines Priest ers/' Although one would have 
thought that the German people had had quite 
enough of that kind of thing from their late Gov- 
ernment,, every book I saw advertised in any of 
these papers was fiction. 

Perhaps the most optimistic of all these ad- 
vertisements was that of the *^ Kismet Labora- 
torium," of Berlin, in the Republik, which claimed 
to make a preparation for the improvement of the 
female form divine. Now that the war was over, 
it read, they no longer felt any hesitation in an- 
nouncing that their great discovery was based 
on a certain product which could only be obtained 
from British India. As their pre-war stock had 
only been eked out by dilution with an not en- 
tirely satisfactory substitute, it was with great 
pleasure that they informed their many customers 



Impressions of *^ Starving Germany" 81 

that they hoped shortly to conclude arrangements 
by which the famous ^^^Bakatal-Busenwasser'' 
could again be furnished in all its pristine purity 
and strength. 

So here, it appears, was an indirect admission 
to prove wrong the individual who averred that 
the German chemists could make out of coal tar 
anything in the world except a gentleman. It 
seems that all the time they had been dependent 
upon British India for even the ^* makings'' of a 
lady. It would have been interesting to know 
what the ^ * arrangements ' ' were by which the sup- 
ply was to be renewed. We were discussing that 
question when the train started, and a **flaf 
wheel on the ^^ bogey '' immediately under our com- 
partment put an end to casual conversation. 

On the outskirts of the town we passed by a 
great series of sidings closely packed with oil- 
tank-cars from all parts of the Central Empires. 
The most of them were marked in German, but 
with names which indicated beyond a doubt that 
they had been employed in serving the Galician 
fields of Austria. On many more the name of 
Eumania appeared in one form or another, and 
several bore the names of the British concerns 
from which they had been seized when the rich 
oilfields of that unlucky country fell to Macken- 
sen's armies. A considerable number of cars 



82 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

were marked with Eussian characters, which led 
to the assumption that they had been seized in 
Courland or the Ukraine, and that they had orig- 
inally run to and from the greatest of the world's 
oilfields at Baku, on the Caspian. There was 
a persistent report at one time that Germany was 
constructing an oil-pipe-line from the Galician 
fields to Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. Although 
quite practicable from an engineering standpoint, 
this appears never to have been seriously con- 
sidered, probably on account of the great demand 
for labour and material it would have made at 
a time when both could be used to better ad- 
vantage in other ways. 

Seeing me standing at the window in the cor- 
ridor looking at the oil-cars, my young compan- 
ion of the steel-tyred auto came out of his com- 
partment and moved up beside me. **As you will 
see,*' he said with his slow precision, *^we never 
lacked badly for the oil for our U-boats. The 
one time that we had the great worry was when 
the Eussians had the fields of Galicia. That cut 
otf our only large supply. But luckily we had 
great stocks in hand when the war started, and 
these were quite sufficient for our needs until 
the Eussians had been driven out of Austria. If 
they had remained there, it is hard to see how 
we could have kept going after our reserve was 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 83 

finished. But they did not stay, the poor Kus- 
sians, and they did not even have the wits to 
destroy the wells properly. We had them pro- 
ducing again at full capacity in a few months. 
Now, if they had been destroyed like the Eng- 
lish destroyed the wells in Eumania it would 
have been different. There, in many places, we 
found it the cheaper to drill the new wells. Ah, 
the English are very thorough when they have 
the time, both in making and un-making." 

As we passed through the suburbs of Wilhelms- 
haven we began to get some inkling of where the 
food came from. All back yards and every spare 
patch of ground were in vegetables. Nowhere in 
England or France have I seen the surface of the 
earth so fully occupied, so thoroughly turned to 
account. Some thrifty cultivators, after filling up 
their available ground with rows of cabbages and 
Brussels sprouts, appeared to have been grow- 
ing beans and peas in hanging baskets and boxes 
of earth set up on frames. One genius had erected 
a forcing bed for what (to judge from the dead 
stalks) looked like cucumbers or squashes on the 
thatched roof of his cowshed. The only thing 
needed to cap the climax of agricultural industry 
would have been a '* hanging garden'' suspended 
from captive balloons. 

As we ran out of the suburban area and into 



84 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

the open country the allotments gave place to 
large and well-tilled farms, or rather to farms 
which had been well tilled in the season favour- 
able to cultivation. At the moment work was 
practically at a standstill on account of the in- 
cessant rains which had inundated considerable 
areas and left the ground heavy, water-logged,, 
and temporarily unfit for the plough. The re- 
sults of a really bountiful harvest, however, were 
to be seen in bulging barns and sheds and plethoric 
haystacks and fodder piles. The surest evidence 
that there had actually been an over-supply of 
vegetables was the careless way in which such 
things as cabbages, swedes, and beets were being 
handled in transport. A starving people does not 
leave food of this kind to rot along the road 
nor in the station J^ards, evidences of which we 
saw every now and then for the next forty miles. 
Practically the whole of the North Sea littoral 
of Germany between the Kiel Canal and the Dutch 
border — across the central section of which we 
were now passing — is the same sort of a flat, sea- 
level expanse, and has the same rich, alluvial soil, 
as the plains of Flanders. This region, like Den- 
mark and Holland, had been largely given over 
to dairying before the war. The conversion of it 
from a pastoral to an agricultural country, by 
ploughing up the endless miles of meadows, has 



Impressions of *^ Starving Germany" 85 

resulted in a huge output of foodstuffs, and has 
put the people inhabiting it well beyond the risk 
of anything approaching starvation, no matter 
how long the blockade might be kept up. The offi- 
cers accompanying us were quite frank in stating 
that the farmers had prospered and waxed wealthy 
by selling their surplus in the nearest industrial 
centres^ such as Bremen and Hamburg. The 
pinch, they said, would come when the people 
began trying to restock their dairy farms again, 
for at least a half of the cattle had been killed off 
as their pastures had been put under cultivation. 

Judging by the very few cattle in sight — in 
comparison with the number one has always seen 
in the fields in dairying regions — one would be 
inclined to estimate the reduction of stock at a 
good deal more than half. The fact that it is 
the local custom to keep the best of their stock 
stabled during the most inclement months of the 
winter doubtless had a good deal to do with the 
few animals in sight. As a matter of fact, there 
was really very little grazing left for those that 
might have been turned out. Sheep were also ex- 
tremely scarce, but as this was not a region where 
they were ever found in great numbers one re- 
marked their absence less than that of cattle. 

But the most astonishing thing of all was that 
not a single pig was sighted on either the go- 



86 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

ing or returning journey. The sight of what 
appeared to be a long-empty sty started a com- 
parison of observations from which it transpired 
that no one watching from either of our two com- 
partments had so much as clapped an eye on 
what the world has long regarded as Germany's 
favourite species of live stock. After that we all 
began standing ' ^ pig lookout, ' ' but the only * * View 
Halloo '' raised was a false one, the ^'scTiwein'' 
turning out to be a dachshund^ and a very 
scrawny one at that. Piqued by this astonishing 
porcine elusiveness, the **air'' parties (upon 
which most of the land travel devolved) met in 
the ward-room of the Hercules that evening and 
contributed to form a *^Pig Pool,'' the whole of 
which was to go to the first member who could 
produce incontestable evidence that he had seen 
a pig upon German soil. Astounding as it may 
seem, this prize was never awarded. The claim 
of one aspirant was ruled out because, on cross- 
questioning, he had to admit that his *^pig" wore 
a German naval uniform and had tried, by vigor- 
ous lying, to head him off from a hangar contain- 
ing a very interesting type of a new seaplane. 
Another claimant proved that he had actually seen 
a pig, but only to have the prize withheld when 
it transpired that he had flushed nothing more 
lifelike than the plaster image of a pig which, 



Impressions of *^ Starving Germany" 87 

cleaver in hand, stood as a butcher's sign in a 
village on the island of Eiigen. A third claimant 
would have won the award had he chanced along 
five minutes sooner when the villagers were 
butchering a pig on the occasion when his party 
visited the Great Belt Islands to inspect the forts. 
Even in this case, though, we should have had 
to weigh carefully the evidence of an Irish- Ameri- 
can officer of the same party, who said that it was 
**a dead cert that pig had died from hog cholera 
a good hour before it was killed ! ' ' 

Although the fact that none of the members 
of the various Allied sub-commissions saw so 
much as a single live hog during the course of 
the many hundred miles travelled by train, motor, 
carriage, or foot in North-Western Germany, does 
not mean that the species has become extinct 
there by any means, there is still no doubt that 
the numbers of this popular and appropriate sym- 
bol of the Hun's grossness have been greatly re- 
duced, and that schweine will be among the top 
items on their list of * immediate requirements" 
forwarded to the Allied Belief Committee. 

Hurried as was this first of our journeys across 
Oldenburg, I was still able to see endless evi- 
dence not only of the intensive cultivation, but 
also the careful and scientific" fertilization, which 
I had good opportunity to study later at closer 



88 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

range in Mecklenburg and Schleswig. Stable 
manure and mulcbes of sedulously conserved de- 
caying vegetable matter were being everywhere 
applied to the land according to the most ap- 
proved modern practice. This I had expected to 
see, for I already knew the German as an in- 
telligent and well-instructed farmer, but what did 
surprise me was clear proof that the supply of 
artificial fertilizers — phosphates, nitrates, and 
lime — was being fairly well maintained. Truck 
loads of these indispensable adjuncts to sustained 
production standing in station sidings showed 
that, and so did the state of the fields themselves ; 
for the fresh young shoots of winter wheat, which 
I saw everywhere pushing up and taking full ad- 
vantage of the almost unprecedentedly mild De- 
cember weather, showed no traces of the ^'hungri- 
ness'' I have so often noted during the last year 
or two in some of the over-cropped and under- 
fertilized fields of England. 

What with prisoners and the unremitting labour 
of women and children, Germany accomplished re- 
markable things in the way of production. The 
area of cultivation was not only largely increased, 
but the production of the old fields was also kept 
at a high level. In no part of the world have I 
ever seen fairer farmsteads than those through 
which the party inspecting the Great Belt forts 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 89 

north of Kiel drove for many miles one day. 
They struck me as combining something of the 
picturesqueness of a Somerset farm with the 
prosperous efficiency of a California ranch. And 
it is as a California rancher myself that I say 
that I only wish I had soil and outbuildings that 
would come anywhere nearly up to the average 
of those throughout this favoured region of 
Schleswig. It is true that many of the people 
thereabouts are Danish, and I even saw a Danish 
flag discreetly displayed behind the neat lace cur- 
tains of one farmhouse. But, Danish or German, 
they are producing huge quantities of good food, 
enough to keep the people of less fertile regions 
of ^^ starving Deutschland" far from want. 

It was just before our arrival at Norddeich at 
the end of this first day's railway journey that I 
spoke to the German officer who had joined me 
at the window of the corridor about the very well- 
fed look of the people we had seen on the streets of 
Wilhelmshaven and at the stations of the towns 
and villages through which we had been passing. 
*^It is true,'' he replied, ^^that we have never suf- 
fered for food in this part of the country, and 
that is because it is so largely agricultural. But 
wait until you go to the industrial centres. In 
Hamburg and Bremen, it is there that you will 
see the want and hunger. It is for those poor 



90 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

people that the Allies must provide much food 
without delay. '^ 

Personally, I did not go either to Hamburg or 
Bremen, being absent with parties visiting the 
Zeppelin stations at Nordholz and Tondern at the 
time the Shipping Board of the Naval Commission 
was inspecting British merchantmen interned in 
these once great ports. A member of that board, 
however, assured me that he had observed no ma- 
terial difference in the appearance of the people 
in the streets of Bremen and Hamburg and those 
of Wilhelmshaven. His party had taken ** pot- 
luck'' at the Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg, where 
the food had been found ample in quantity and not 
unappetizing, even on a meatless day. 

**But what of the poorf I asked. **Did you 
see anything of the quarters that would corre- 
spond to the slums of London or Liverpool," 

^* Germany,'' he replied, **to her credit, has 
very few places where the housing is outwardly so 
bad as in many British industrial cities I could 
name. We did not see much of the parts of 
Bremen and Hamburg where the working-classes 
live; but we did see a good deal of the workers 
themselves. I know under-feeding when I see it, 
for I was in Russia but a few months ago. But, 
so far as I could see, the chief difference be- 
tween the men in the dockyards and shipbuilding 



Impressions of ^^ Starving Germany" 91 

establishments of Hamburg and those of the Tyne 
and Clyde was that the former were working 
harder. They merely glanced up at us as we 
passed, with little curiosity and no resentment, 
and went right on with the job in hand. No, 
everything considered, I should not say that any 
one is suffering seriously for lack of food in either 
Bremen or Hamburg.'' 

*^No one is suffering seriously for lack of food.'' 
That was the feeling of all of us at the end of 
our first day in ^* starving Germany," and (if I 
may anticipate) it was also our verdict when the 
Hercules sailed for England, three weeks later. 



IV 

ACROSS THEI SANDS TO NOEDERNEY 

The names of ^^Norderney" and **Borkum'' on 
the list of seaplane stations to be inspected seemed 
to strike a familiar chord of memory, but it was 
not until I chanced upon a dog-eared copy of 
^^The Riddle of the Sands'' on a table in the 
** Commission Room'' of the Hercules that it 
dawned upon me where I had heard them before. 
There was no time at the moment to re-turn the 
pages of this most consummately told yarn of its 
kind ever written, but, prompted by a happy in- 
spiration, I slipped the grimy little volume into my 
pocket. And there (as the clattering special 
which was to take us to ISTorddeich, e7i route to 
Norderney, turned off from the Bremen main- 
line a few miles outside of Wilhelmshaven) I 
found it again, just as the green water-logged 
fields and bogs of the ^4and of the seven sieW 
began to unroll in twin panoramas on either side. 
Opening the book at random somewhere toward 
the middle, my eye was drawn to a paragraph 
beginning near the top of the page facing a much- 
pencilled chart. 

92 



Across the Sands to Norderney 93 

**. . . The mainland is that district of Prussia 
that is known as East Friesland/' (I rememher 
now that it was ^^Carruthers,'^ writing in the 
Dulcihella, off Wangerogg*, who was describing 
the * ' lay of the land. ' ^ ) ^ ^ It is a short, flat-topped 
peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems estuary 
and beyond that by Holland, and on the east 
by the Jade estuary; a low-lying country, con- 
taining great tracts of miarsh, and few towns of 
any size; on the north side none. Seven islands 
lie off the coast. All, except Borkum, which is 
round, are attenuated strips, slightly crescent- 
shaped, rarely more than a mile broad, and taper- 
ing at the ends; in length averaging about six 
miles, from Norderney and Juist, which are seven 
and nine respectively, to little Baltrum, which is 
only two and a half. ' ' 

As I turned the book sideways to look at the 
chart the whole fascinating story came back with 
a rush. What man who has ever knocked about 
in small boats, tramped roads and poked about 
generally in places where he had no business to 
poke could forget it? The East Friesland penin- 
sula, with its ^* seven little rivers'' and ** seven 
channels" and ** seven islands,'' was the **take 
off" for the German army which was to cross the 
North Sea in barges to land on the sands of **The 
Wash" for the invasion of England. And this 



94 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

very line over which our rickety two-car special 
was clinkety-clanking — I wished that ^^Carruth- 
ers ' ^ could have seen what a pitiful little old single- 
track it had become — was the *^ strategic trunk'' 
over which the invading cohorts were to be shunted 
in their thousands to the waiting deep-sea-going 
barges in the canalized siels. There was Essen, 
which was to have been the ** nodal centre'' of 
the great embarkation, and scarcely had I located 
it on the map before its tall spire was stabbing 
the north-western skyline as we drew in to the 
station. 

A raw-boned, red-faced girl, her astonishingly 
powerful frame clad in a man's greasy overall, 
lowered the barrier at the high-road crossing, the 
same barrier, I reflected, which had held up ^^Car- 
ruthers," Von Brunning, and the two ** cloaked 
gentlemen" on the night of the great adventure. 
Four *^land girls," in close-fitting brown cor- 
duroys, with great baskets of red cabbages on their 
shoulders, were just trudging off down the road 
to Dornum, the very ** cobbled causeway flanked 
with ditches and willows, and running cheek by 
jowl with the railway track" which ^^Carruthers" 
had followed by midnight, with ** fleecy clouds and 
a half moon overhead," in search of the Benser 
Tief. There was even a string of mighty barges 
towing down the narrow canal of the **Tief " when 



Across the Sands to Norderney 95 

we crossed its rattling* bridge a few rainutes later. 
And just as ^^Carruthers'^ described, the road and 
railway clung closely together all the way to 
Dornum, and about halfway were joined by a third 
companion in the shape of a puny stream, the 
Neues Ticf. ^* Wriggling and doubling like an 
eel, choked with sedges and reeds,'' it had no more 
pretensions to being navigable now than then. It 
still ^'looped away into the fens out of sight, to 
reappear again close to Dornum in a more dig- 
nified guise," and it still skirted the town to the 
east, where there was a towpath and a piled 
wharf. The only change I was able to note in 
the momentary halt of the train was that the ** red- 
brick building with the look of a warehouse, roof- 
less as yet and with workmen on the scaffolds,'' 
had now been covered with red tile and filled with 
red cabbages. 

It was at Dornum that ^^Carruthers" (who was 
masquerading as a German sailor on his way to 
visit a sister living on Baltrum) fell in at a primi- 
tive Gasthaus with an ex-crimp, drunken with 
much scJinappsen, who insisted on accompanying 
him on a detour to Domumersiel, where he had 
planned to do a hasty bit of spying. From the 
right-hand window I caught a brief glimpse of 
the ribbon of the coastward road, down the length 
of which the oddly-assorted pair — the Foreign 



96 To Kiel in the '* Hercules" 

Office precis writer and the one-time *^ shanghai" 
artist — had stumbled arm-in-arm, treating each 
other in every gin-shop on the way. 

* * Carruthers ' ' ' detonr to the coast carried him 
out of sight of the railway, so that he missed the 
little red-brick schoolhouse, close up by the track, 
where the buxom mistress had her whole brood 
of young Fritzes and Gretchens lined up along 
the fence of the right-of-way to wave and cheer 
our train as it passed. How she received word 
of the coming of the ** Allied Special^' we could 
only conjecture, but it was probably through some 
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council friend in the 
railway service. But even so, as the schoolhouse 
was three miles from the nearest station and had 
nothing suggestive of a telephone line running to 
it, she must have had her banzai party standing 
by in readiness a good part of the forenoon ses- 
sion. Hurriedly dropping a window (they work 
rather hard on account of the stiffness of the thick 
paper strap), I was just able to gather that the 
burden of the greeting was *^Good morning, good 
morning, sir!" repeated many times in guttural 
chorus. If any of them were shouting ^^ Wel- 
come ! ' ' as one or two of our party thought they 
heard, it escaped my ears. They did the thing so 
well one was sure it had been rehearsed, and won- 



Across the Sands to Norderney 97 

dered how long it had been since those same 
throaty trebles had been raised in the *^Hymn 
of Hate/' If '^Carruthers^' spying visit to 
Dornumersiel resulted in anything more *^ re- 
vealing ' ' than the dig in the ribs one of the young- 
sters got from the mistress for (apparently) not 
cheering lustily enough, he neglected to set it down 
in his story. This little incident prepared us 
for much we were to see later in the way of 
German *' conciliation" methods. 

^^Carruthers/' when he returned to the rail- 
way again and took train at Hage, made the 
journey from the latter station to Nor den in ten 
minutes. The fact that our special took twenty 
is sufficient commentary on the deterioration of 
German road-beds and rolling stock. Norden, 
which is the junction point for Emden, to the 
south, and Norddeich, to the north, is a good- 
sized town, and we noticed here that the streets 
were beflagged and arched with evergreen as at 
Wilhelmshaven, doubtless in expectation of re- 
turning troops. While our engines were being 
changed, a couple of workmen, standing back in 
the depths of a tool-house, kept waving their hands 
ingratiatingly every time the armed guard (who 
always paced up and down the platform while 
the train was at a station) turned his back. What 



98 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

they were driving at — unless co-operating with 
the children in the general ** conciliation" pro- 
gram — we were not able to make out. 

From Norden to Norddeich was a run of but 
three or four miles, but a bad road-bed and a worse 
engine made the journey a tedious if fitting finale 
to our painful progress across the East Frisian 
peninsula. Halting but a few moments at the 
main station, the train was shunted to a spur 
which took it right out to the quay where the great 
dyke bent inward to form a narrow artificial har- 
bour. A few steps across the slippery moss- 
covered stones, where the falling tide had bared 
the sloping landing, took us to where a small but 
powerfully engined steam launch was waiting to 
convey the party to Norderney. Manned by naval 
ratings, it had the same aspect of neglect which 
characterized all of the warships we had visited. 
The men saluted smartly, however, and on our 
expressing a wish to remain in the open air in 
preference to the stuify cabin, they tumbled below 
and brought up cushions and ranged them along 
the deck-house to sit upon. The Allied officers 
dangled their legs to port,, the German officers to 
starboard, while the ex-sailor and the ** plain- 
clothes'' detective from the Workmen's and Sol- 
diers' Council disposed themselves authorita- 
tively in the wheel-house. 



Across the Sands to Norderney 99 

A few minutes' run between heavy stone jetties 
brought us to the open sea, where the launch be- 
gan threading a channel which seemed to be 
marked mostly by buoys, but here and there by 
close-set rows of saplings, now just beginning to 
show their scraggly tops above the falling water. 
It was the sight of these latter marks — so char- 
acteristic of these waters — that reminded me that 
we had at last come out into the real hunting 
ground of the Dulcihella, where ^^Davies'* and 
^^Carruthers^' had puzzled out the solution of 
*^The Riddle of the Sands/' Norderney and 
Juist and Borkum and the other of the ** seven 
islands'' strung their attenuated lengths in a 
broken barrier to seaward, and between them and 
the mainland we were leaving astern stretched 
the amazing mazes of the sands, alternately bared 
and covered by the ebb and flow of the tides. Two- 
thirds of the area, according to ^'Carruthers," 
were dry at low water, when the ^ ' remaining third 
becomes a system of lagoons whose distribution 
is controlled by the natural drift of the North 
Sea as it forces its way through the intervals be- 
tween the islands. Each of these intervals re- 
sembles the bar of a river, and is obstructed by 
dangerous banks over which the sea pours at 
every tide, scooping out a deep pool. This fans 
out and ramifies to east and west as the pent-up 



100 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

current frees itself, encircles the islands, and 
spreads over the intervening flats. But the fur- 
ther it penetrates the less scouring force it has, 
and as a result no island is girt completely by a 
low-water channel. About midway at the back 
of each of them is a * watershed,' only covered for 
five or six hours out of the twelve. A boat, even 
of the lightest draught, navigating behind the 
islands must choose its moment for passing 
these." 

*^I trust we have ^chosen our moment' care- 
fully," I said to myself after reading those lines 
and reflecting what a large part of their time the 
Dulcihella, Kormoran, and all the other craft in 
the ** Riddle" had spent careened upon sand-spits. 
To reassure myself, I leaned back and asked one 
of the German officers if boats didn't run aground 
pretty often on that run. ^^Oh, yes, most often," 
was the reply, *^but only at low water or when the 
fog is very thick. With this much water, and 
when we can see as far as we can now" — there 
was about a quarter of a mile of visibility — ^* there 
is no danger. Our difficulty will come when we 
try to return this evening on the low water." 

It may have been my imagination, but I thought 
he put a shade more accent on that try than a 
real optimist would have done under similar cir- 
cumstances. But then, I told myself, it was 



Across the Sands to Norderney 101 

hardly a time when one could expect a German 
officer to be optimistic about anything. 

Heading out through the well-marked channel 
of the Buse Tief, between the sands of the Itzen- 
dorf Plate to port and Hohe Riff to starboard, 
twenty minutes found the launch in the opener 
waters off the west end of Norderney where, with 
its light draught, it had no longer to thread the 
winding of the buoyed fairway. Standing on 
northward until the red roofs and white walls of 
the town sharpened into ghostly relief on the cur- 
tain of the mist, course was altered five or six 
points to starboard, and we skirted a broad stretch 
of sandy beach, from the upper end of which 
the even slopes of concreted ^^runs'^ were visi- 
ble, leading back to where, dimly outlined in their 
darker opacity, a long row of great hangars 
loomed fantastically beyond the dunes. Doubling 
a sharp spit, the launch nosed in and brought up 
alongside the landing of a slip notched out of the 
side of the little natural harbour. 

The Commander of the station — a small man, 
but wiry and exceedingly well set up — met us as 
we stepped off the launch. Then, and through- 
out the visit, his quiet dignity of manner and 
ready (but not too ready) courtesy struck a wel- 
come mean between the incongruous blends of 
suUenness and subserviency we had encountered 



102 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

in meeting the officers in the German warships. 
He saluted each member of the party as he landed, 
but tactfully refrained from offering his hand 
to any but the attached German officers. It was 
this attitude on the part of the Commander, to- 
gether with the uniformly courteous but unef- 
fusive demeanour of the other officers with whom 
we were thrown in contact, that made the visit to 
Norderney perhaps the pleasantest of all the many 
inspections carried out in Germany. 

"Walking inland along a brick-paved road, we 
passed a large canteen or recreation club (with 
a crowd of curious but quite respectful men lined 
up along the verandah railings to watch us go 
by) before turning in to a fine new brick-and- 
tile building which appeared to be the officers' 
Casino. Leaving our overcoats in the reception 
room, we joined the dozen or more officers awaiting 
us at the entrance and fared on by what had 
once been flower-bordered walks to the hangars. 
As we came out upon the ^^ tarmac" — here, as with 
all German seaplane and airship stations, the runs 
for the machines in front of the hangars are paved 
with concrete instead of the tarred macadam which 
is used so extensively in England and France — 
the men of the station were seen to be drawn up 
by companies, as for a review. Each company 
stood smartly to attention at the order of its offi- 



Across the Sands to Norderney 103 

cers as the party came abreast of it, and we — 
both Allied and German officers — saluted in re- 
turn. As we passed on, each company in turn 
broke rank and quietly dispersed to barracks, their 
officers following on to join the party in the fur- 
therest hangar, where the inspection was to be- 
gin. The discipline appeared to be faultless, and 
it was soon evident that the men and their offi- 
cers had arrived at some sort of a *^ working un- 
derstanding'' to tide them over the period of in- 
spection, if not longer. 

The two representatives of the Workmen and 
Soldiers who had accompanied our party from 
Wilhelmshaven were allowed to be present during 
the inspection, and with them two other ** white- 
banders'' who appeared to have been elected to 
represent the men of the station. All other men 
had been cleared out of the sheds in conformity 
with the stipulations of the armistice. Some un- 
authorized individual — apparently a mechanic — 
who, halfway through the inspection, was noticed 
following the party, was summarily ordered out by 
the Commander. He obeyed somewhat sullenly, 
but though we subsequently saw him in gesticula- 
tive confab with some of his mates on the out- 
side, he did not venture again into any of the 
hangars. That was the nearest approach to in- 
subordination we saw in Norderney. 



104 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

The officers of the station — now that we saw 
them, a score or more in number, all together — 
were a fine, business-like looking lot. All of them 
wore some kind of a decoration, most of them 
several, and among these were two or three of 
the highly-prized Orders ^^Pour le Merited' As 
Norderney was the *^star'^ seaplane station, that 
body of keen-eyed, sqnare-jawed young flying offi- 
cers undoubtedly included the cleverest naval 
pilots at Germany's disposal. What their many 
decorations had been given for there was, of 
course, no way of learning; nor did we find out 
whether the presence of so many of them at the 
inspection was voluntary or by order. Though, 
like their 'Commander, quiet and reserved, they 
were invariably courteous and willing in doing 
anything to facilitate the tedious progress of in- 
spection. 

There was an amusing little incident which oc- 
curred during the course of inspection in con- 
nection with a very smart young German officer, 
who, from the moment I first saw him at the door 
of the Casino, I kept telling myself I had en- 
countered somewhere before. For half an hour 
or more — while checking the names and numbers 
of the machines in my notebook as inspection was 
completed — my mind was running back through 
one German colony or foreign settlement after 



Across the Sands to Norderney 105 

another, trying to find the scene into which that 
florid face (with its warm, wide-set eyes and its 
full, sensual mouth) fitted. Dar-es-Salaam, 
Windhoek, Tsingtau, Yap, Apia, Herbertshohe — 
I scurried back through them all without uncov- 
ering a clue. Where else had I met Germans! 
The southern ^ ' panhandle ' ^ of Brazil, the south 
of Chile,, Bagdad — That was the first name to 
awaken a sense of '^ nearness.'^ *^ Bagdad, Bag- 
dad Eailway, Assur, Mosul,'' I rambled on, and 
just as I began to recall that I had encountered 
Germans scattered all along the caravan route 
from the Tigris to Syria, the object of my in- 
terest turned up those soulful eyes of his to look 
at one of the American officers clambering into 
the ^^ house'' of the *^ Giant" monoplane seaboat 
under inspection at the moment — and I had him. 
^^ Aleppo! ^Du Bist Wie Eine Blume!'" I 
chortled exultantly, my mind going back to a night 
in June, 1912, when, the day after my arrival 
from the desert, the American Consul had taken 
me to a party at the Austrian Consulate in honour 
of some one or other who was about to depart 
for home — wherever that was. Young Herr 

X (I even recalled the name now) and his 

brother, both on the engineering staff of the Bag- 
dad Eailway, were among the guests, the former 
very smitten with a sloe-eyed sylph of a Greek 



106 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

Levantine, whose mother (so a friendly gossip 
told me) had been a dancer in a cafe chantant in 
Beirut before she married the Smyrna hairdresser 
who afterwards made a fortune buying licorice 
root from the Arabs. The girl (there was no 
denying the lissome grace of her serpentine slen- 
derness) was sipping her pink rose-leaf sherbet 
in a balcony above the open court when Herr 
X had been asked to sing along towards mid- 
night, and the fervid passion of his upturned 
glances as he sung **Du Bist Wie Eine Blume" 
as an encore to **Ich Liebe Dich" had made enough 
of an impression on my mind to need no more than 
the reminder vouchsafed me to recall it. 

Evidently (perhaps because I had not furnished 
him with a similar reason) Herr Eomeo did not 
trace any connection between my present well- 
rounded,, ** sea-faring" figure and the sun-dried, 
fever-wrecked anatomy I had dragged into Aleppo 
in 1912, for I noted that his eyes had passed over 
me impersonally twice or thrice without a flicker of 
recognition. The explosiveness of my exultant 
chortle, however, must have assailed the ear of 
the German officer standing a couple of paces in 
front of me, for he turned round quickly and 
asked if I had spoken to him. 

*^No — er — ^not exactly," I stammered, adding, 
at the promptings of a sudden reckless impulse, 



Across the Sands to Norderney 107 

*^but I would like to ask if you knew when Lieu- 
tenant X over there left the Bagdad Railway 

for the flying serviced 

**He was at the head office in Frankfurt when 
the war began, and joined shortly afterwards/' 
the young officer replied promptly, stepping back 
beside me. Then, as the somewhat surprising 
nature of the query burst upon him, a look of 
astonishment flushed his face and a pucker of 
suspicion drew his bushy brows together in a 
perturbed frown. ^*But may I ask — *' he be- 
gan. 

**And his brother who was with him in Aleppo 
— the one with the scar on his cheek and the 
top of one ear sliced off,'' I pressed; *' where is 
he?" 

**Died of fever in Nishbin," again came the 
prompt answer. **But" (blurting it out quickly) 
^*how do you know about them?" 

Being human, and therefore weak,, it was not 
in me to enlighten him with the truth, and to 
add that I was merely a second-class Yankee hack 
writer, temporarily togged out in an E.N.V.R. 
uniform to regularize my position of ** Keeper of 
the Records ' ' of the Allied Naval Armistice Com- 
mission. No, I couldn't do that. Indeed, every- 
thing considered, I am inclined to think that I 
rendered a better service to the Allied cause when 



108 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

I squared my shoulders importantly and delivered 
myself oracularly of, ^*It is our business to know'' 
(impressive pause) **all.'' 

My reward. was worthy of the effort. ^*Ach, 
it is but true/' sighed the young officer resignedly. 
*^The English Intelligence is wonderful, as we 
have too often found out." 

**It is not bad," I admitted modestly, as I 
strolled over to make a note of the fact that the 
machine-gun mounting of one of the Frederich- 
hafens had not been removed. 

I could see that my young friend was burst- 
ing to impart to Lieutenant X^ the fact that 

he was a *^ marked man," but it was just as well 
that no opportunity offered in the course of the 
inspection. That the ominous news had been 
broken at luncheon, however, I felt certain from 

the fact that when, missing X from the group 

of officers who saluted us from the doorway of 
the Casino on our departure, I cast a furtive 
glance at the upper windows, it surprised him 
in the act of withdrawing behind one of the lace 
curtains. I only hope he has nothing on his con- 
science in the way of hospital bombings and the 
like. If he has, it can hardly have failed to oc- 
cur to him that his name is inscribed on the Allies ' 
*' black-list," and that he will have to stand trial 
in due course. 



Across the Sands to Norderney 109 

It's a strange thing, this cropping up of half- 
remembered faces in new surroundings. The 
very next day, in the course of the visit to the 
Zeppelin station at Nordholz — but I will not an- 
ticipate. 

Under the terms of the armistice the Germans 
agreed to render all naval seaplanes unfit for use 
by removing their propellers, machine-guns, and 
bomb-dropping equipment, and dismantling their 
wireless and ignition systems. To see that this 
was carried out on a single machine was not much 
of a task, but multiplied by the several scores in 
such a station as Norderney, it became a formid- 
able labour. To equalize the physical work, the 
sub-commission for seaplane stations arranged 
that the British and American officers included in 
it should take turn-and-turn about in active in- 
spection and checking the result of the latter with 
the lists furnished in advance by the Germans. 
At Norderney the ** active service" side of the 
program fell to the lot of the two American officers 
to carry out. The swift pace they set at the out- 
set slowed down materially toward the finish, and 
it was a pair of very weary officers that dropped 
limply from the last two Albatrosses and sat down 
upon a pontoon to recover their breath. It was, 

I believe, Lieut.-Commander L who, ruefully 

rubbing down a cramp which persisted in knotting 



110 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

Ms left calf, declared that he had just computed 
that his combined clamberings in the course of 
the inspection were equal to ascending and de- 
scending a mountain half a mile high. 

Practically all of the machines at Norderney 
were of the tried and proven types — Branden- 
hurgs,. Albatrosses, Frederichafens, Gothas, etc. — 
already well-known to the Allies. (It was not un- 
til the great experimental station at Warnemunde, 
in the Baltic, was visited a fortnight later that 
specimens of the latest types were revealed.) The 
Allied experts of the party were greatly impressed 
with the excellence of construction of all of the 
machines, none of them appearing to have suf- 
fered in the least as a consequence of a shortage 
of materials. The steel pontoons in particular 
— a branch of construction to which the Germans 
had given much attention, and with notable suc- 
cess — ^came in for especially favourable comment. 
(The Commander of the station, by the way, 
showed us one of these pontoons which he had 
had fitted with an engine and propeller and used 
in duck-shooting.) The general verdict seemed 
to be that the Germans had little to learn from 
any one in the building of seaplanes, and that 
this was principally due to the fact that they had 
concentrated upon it for oversea work, where 
the British had been going in more and more 



Across the Sands to Norderney 111 

for swift ** carrier '' ships launching aeroplanes. 
It was by aeroplanes launched from the ^* car- 
rier" Furious that the great Zeppelin station at 
Tondern was practically destroyed last summer, 
and there is no doubt that this kind of a combina- 
tion can accomplish far more effective work — 
providing, of course, that the power using it has 
command of the sea — than anything that can be 
done by seaplanes. It was the fact that Germany 
did not have control of the sea, rather than any 
lack of ingenuity or initiative, that pinned her to 
the seaplane, and, under the circumstances, it 
has to be admitted that she made very creditable 
use of the latter. 

The one new type of machine at Norderney (al- 
though the existence of it had been known to the 
Allies for some time) was the ^^ giant" monoplane 
seaboat, quite the most remarkable machine of the 
kind in the world at the present time. Though its 
span of something like 120 feet is less than that 
of a number of great aeroplanes already in use, 
its huge breadth of wing gave it a plane area of 
enormous size. The boat itself was as large — 
and apparently as seaworthty — as a good-sized 
steam launch, and so roomy that one could al- 
most stand erect inside of it. It quite dwarfed 
anything of the kind I had ever seen before. Nor 
was the boat, spacious as it was, the only closed-in 



112 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

space. Twenty feet or more above the deck of it, 
between the wings, was a large ^*box^' contain- 
ing, among other things, a very elaborately 
equipped sound-proof wireless room. The tech- 
nical instruments of control and navigation — espe- 
cially the very compact ^^Gyro" compasses — 
stirred the Allied experts to an admiration they 
found difficult to restrain. 

One of the German officers who had accompanied 
us from Wilhelmshaven told me something of 
the history of this greatest of monoplanes. ' ' This 
flying boat,'* he said, while we waited for the 
somewhat lengthy inspection to be completed, 
'^was the last great gift that Count, Zeppelin'' 
(he spoke the name with an awe that was almost 
adoration) *^gave to his country before he died. 
He was terribly disappointed by the failure of 
the Zeppelin airship as an instrument for bombing, 
and the last months of his life were spent in de- 
signing something to take its place. He realized 
that the size of the mark the airship offered to the 
constantly improving anti-aircraft artillery, to- 
gether with the invention of the explosive bullet 
and the increasing speed and climbing power of 
aeroplanes, put an end for ever to the use of 
Zeppelins where they would be exposed to at- 
tack. He set about to design a heavier-than-air 
machine that would be powerful enough to carry a 



Across the Sands to Norderney 113 

really great weight of bomhs, and the * Giant' you 
see here is the result. 

**As Count Zeppelin did not believe that it would 
ever be possible to land a machine of this weight 
and size on the earth, he made it a flying boat. 
But it was not intended for flights over water at 
all in the first place — that was to be simply for 
rising from and landing in. It was to be kept 
at one of our seaplane stations on the Belgian 
coast,, as near as possible to the Front, and from 
here it was to go for bombing flights behind the 
enemy lines. But before it was completed ex- 
perience had proved that it was quite practicable 
to land big machines on the earth, and so the 
* Giant' found itself superseded as a bomber. It 
was then that it was brought to the attention of the 
Naval Flying Service, and we, recognizing in it 
the possibilities of an ideal machine for long-dis- 
tance reconnaissance, took it over and completed 
it. Now, although a few changes have been made 
in the direction of making it more of a *sea' ma- 
chine, it does not differ greatly from the original 
designs of Count Zeppelin." 

As to how the machine had turned out in prac- 
tice he was, naturally, rather non-committal. The 
monoplane, he thought, had the advantage over a 
biplane for sea use that its wings were much 
higher above the water, and therefore much less 



114 To Kiel in the '* Hercules" 

likely to get smashed up hy heavy waves. He 
admitted that this machine had proved extremely 
difficult to fly — or rather to land — and that it had 
been employed exclusively for ^^schooP' pur- 
poses, for the training of pilots to fly the others 
of the same type that had been building. Now 
that the war was over, he had some doubts as to 
whether these would ever be completed. *^We 
are having to modify so many of our plans, you 
see,'^ he remarked naively. 

On the fuselage of several of the machines there 
were evidences that signs or marks had been 
scratched out and painted over, and I took it 
that the words or pictures so recently obliterated 
had probably been of a character calculated to be 
offensive to the visiting Allied officers. One little 
thing had been overlooked, however, or else left 
because it was in a corner somewhat removed from 
the ebb and flow of the tide of inspection. I dis- 
covered it while passing along to the machine 
shops in the rear of one of the hangars, and 
later contrived to manoeuvre myself back to it 
for a confirmatory survey. It was nothing more 
or less than a map of the United States which some 
angry pilot had thoroughly strafed by stabbing 
with a penknife blade. I was not able to study 
it long enough to be sure just what the method 
of the madness was, but — from the fact that the 



Across the Sands to Norderney 115 

environs of New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia 
and Detroit had been literally pecked to pieces — 
it seemed possible that it might have been an at- 
tack on the industrial centres — perhaps because 
they were turning out so much munitions for the 
Allies. 

There were two other maps tacked up on the 
same wall. One was of Africa, with the ex-Grer- 
man colonies coloured red, with lighter shaded 
areas overflowing from them on to British, Bel- 
gian, French, and Portuguese possessions. This 
may have been (I have since thought) a copy of 
the famous map of ** Africa in 1920,'' issued in 
Germany early in the war, but I had no time to 
puzzle out the considerable amount of explana- 
tory lettering on it. So far as I could see, this 
map was unmarked, not even a black mourning 
border having been added. 

The third map was of Asia, and a long, wind- 
ing and apparently rather carefully made cut run- 
ning from the north-west corner toward the centre 
completely defeated me to account for. The fact 
that it ran through Asia Minor, Northern Syria, 
and down into Mesopotamia seemed to point to 
some connection with the Bagdad Eailway — per- 
haps a strafe at an enterprise which, first and 
last, had deflected uselessly so huge an amount 
of German money and material. 



116 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

The inspection over and the terms of the armis- 
tice having been found most explicitly carried out, 
we returned to the reception room of the Casino 
for lunch. Although the Commander protested 
that all arrangements had been made for serving 
us with mittagessen, our senior officer, acting un- 
der orders, replied that we had brought our own 
food and that this, with a pitcher of water, would 
be quite sufficient. The water was sent, and with 
it two beautiful long, slender bottles of Hock 
which — as they were never opened — only served 
to accentuate the flatness of the former. 

We heard the officers of the station trooping up 
the stairs as we unrolled our sandwiches, and 
just as we were pulling up around the table some 
one threw open a piano in the room above our 
heads and struck three ringing chords. * * Bang ! ' ' 
— interval — ^ ^ Bang ! ' ' — interval — * * Bang ! ' * they 
crashed one after the other, and the throb of them 
set the windows rattling and the pictures (paint- 
ings of the station's fallen pilots) swaying on the 
wall. 

'^Prelude in G flat," breathed Major N 

tensely, as he waited with eye alight and ear acock 
for the next notes. **My word, the chap's a 
master!" 

But the next chord was never struck. Instead, 
there was a gruff order, the scrape of feet on the 



Across the Sands to Norderney 117 

floor, and the slam of a closed piano,, followed by 
the confused rumble of several angry voices speak- 
ing at the same time. Then silence. 

** Looks like the majority of our hosts don't 
think ^Inspection Day's' quite the proper occasion 
for tinkling Rachmaninoff on the ivories," ob- 
served Lieutenant-Commander L , U.S.N., 

after which he and Major N began discussing 

plans for educating the popular taste for ^^good 
music" and the rest of us fell to on our sand- 
wiches. 

The fog — that all-pervading East Frisian fog 
— which had been thickening steadily during the 
inspection, settled down in a solid bank while we 
sat at lunch. With a scant dozen yards of visibil- 
ity, the Commander rated the prospects of cross- 
ing to the mainland so unfavourable that he sug- 
gested our remaining for the night at one of the 
Norderney hotels still open, and going over to 
Borkum (which we were planning to reach by de- 
stroyer) the next morning by launch. It was the 
difficulty in securing a prompt confirmation of 
what would have been a time-saving change of 

schedule which led Captain H to reject the 

plan and decide in favour of making an attempt 
to reach Norddeich in, and in spite of, the fog. 
The Commander shook his head dubiously. *^My 
men who know the passage best have left^the sta- 



118 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

tion,'' he said; **but I will do the best I can for 
you, and perhaps yon will have luck.'' He saw us 
off at the landing with the same quiet courtesy 
with which he had received us. He was a very lik- 
able chap, that Commander; perhaps the one indi- 
vidual with whom we were thrown into intimate 
contact in the course of the whole visit to whom 
one would have thought of applying that term. 

Noticing that the launch in which we were 
backing away from the landing was at least double 
the size of the one in which we had crossed, I 
asked one of the German officers if the greater 
draught of it was not likely to increase our chances 
of running aground. 

**0f course, '^ he replied; **but the larger cabin 
will also be much more comfortable if we have 
to wait for the next tide to get off. ' ' 

As the launch swung slowly round in the mud- 
and-sand stained welter of reversed screws, I 
bethought me of the ^^Eiddle** again, and fished it 
forth from my pocket. It was disappointing to 
leave without having had a glimpse of the town 
where **Dollmann" and his ** rose-brown-cheeked '* 
daughter Clara had lived, but the fog closed us 
round in a grey-walled cylinder scarcely more in 
diameter than the launch was long. But we were 
right on the course, I reflected, of the dinghy 
which **Davies'^ piloted with such consummate 



Across the Sands to Norderney 119 

skill through just such a fog (**five yards or so was 
the radius of our vision,'' wrote **Carruthers") to 
Memmert to spy on the conference at the salvage 
plant on that desolate sand-spit. I turned up the 
chapter headed ** Blindfold to Memmert/' and 
read how, sounding with a notched boathook in the 
shallows that masterly young sailor had felt his 
way across the Buse Tief to the eastern outlet of 
the Memmert Balje, the only channel deep enough 
to carry the dinghy through the half -bared sand- 
banks between Juist and the mainland. Our own 
problem, it seemed to me, was a very similar one 
to that which confronted ^* Da vies," only, in our 
case, it was the entrance of the channel where 
the Buse Tief narrowed between the Holies Riff 
and the Itzendorf Plate that had to be located. 
Failing that, we were destined to roost till the 
next tide on a sandbank, and that meant we were 
out for all night, as there would be no chance of 
keeping to a channel, however well marked, in 
both fog and darkness. 

Ten minutes went by — fifteen — twenty — with 
no sign of the buoy which marked the opening we 
were trying to strike. Now the engines were 
eased down to quarter-speed, and she lost way 
just in time to back off from a shining glacis of 
steel-grey sand that came creeping out of the fog. 
For the next ten minutes, with bare steerage 



120 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

way on, she nosed cautiously this way and that, 
like a man groping for a doorway in the dark. 
Then a hail from the lookout on the bow was 
echoed by exclamations of relief from the Ger- 
man officers. *^Here is the outer buoy,'^ one of 
them called across to us reassuringly; 'Hhe rest 
of the way is well marked and easy to follow. 
We will soon be at Norddeich. ' ' 

Presently a fresh buoy appeared as we nosed 
on shoreward, then a second, and then a third, 
continuing the line of the first two. Speed was in- 
creased to *^half,'* and the intervals of picking up 
the marks correspondingly cut down. Confident 
that there was nothing more to worry about, I 
pulled out * * The Riddle ' ' again, for I had just re- 
called that it was about halfway to Norddeich, in 
the Buse Tief, that * * Carruthers ' ' had brought off 
his crowning exploit, the running aground of the 
tug anjd * invasion" lighter — with Von Brunning, 
Boehme, and the mysterious ^^ cloaked passenger *' 
— as they neared the end of the successful night 
trial trip in the North Sea. Substituting himself 
for the man at the wheel by a ruse, he had edged 
the tug over to starboard and was just thinking 
**What the Dickens '11 happen to her?*' when the 
end came; **a euthanasia so mild and gradual 
(for the sands are fringed with mud) that the 
disaster was on us before I was aware of it. 



Across the Sands to Norderney 121 

There was just the tiniest premonitory shudder- 
ing as our keel clove the buttery medium, a cascade 
of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed 
to rigidity in my hands as the tug nestled up to 
her final resting-place.'' 

And very like that it was with us. It was a 
guttural oath from somewhere forward rather 
than any perceptible jar that told me the launch 
had struck, and it was not till after the screw had 
been churning sand for half a minute that there 
was any perceptible heel. It had come about 
through one of the buoys being missing and the 
next in line out of place, one of the Germans 
reckoned; but whatever the cause, there we were 
— stuck fast. Or, at least, we would have been 
with any less resourceful and energetic a crew. 
If their very lives had depended on it, those four 
or five German seamen could not have worked 
harder, nor to better purpose, to get that launch 
free. At the end of a quarter of an hour their in- 
defatigable efforts were rewarded, and a half 
hour later we were settling ourselves in the warm 
compartment of our waiting train. The Hun 
has no proper sense of humour. Eeverse the 
roles, and any British bluejackets I have ever 
known would have run a German Armistice Com- 
mission on to the first sandbank that hove in sight, 
and damned the consequences. 



NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS 

I HAVE written in a previous chapter of the great 
contrast observed between the morale of the men 
at Norderney, and the other seaplane stations vis- 
ited by parties from the Allied Naval Commission, 
and that of those in the remaining German war- 
ships, accounting for the difference by the fact 
that the former had been kept busier than the lat- 
ter, and that they had not suffered the shame of 
the ** Great Surrender'* which has cast a black, 
unlifting shadow upon the dregs of the High Sea 
Fleet. Whether the airships were kept as busy as 
the seaplanes right up to the end it would be dif- 
ficult to say, but, whatever may be the reason for 
it, we found the morale of the great Zeppelin sta- 
tions suffered very little if at all in comparison 
with that of the working bases of the naval heav- 
ier-than-air machines. 

For all the barbarity of many of their raids, 
there was splendid stuff in the officers and crews 
of the Zeppelins which engaged in the campaign 
of *^frightfulness" against England, and it is idle 
to deny it. In a better cause, or even in worthier 

122 



The Den of the Zeppelins 123 

work for an indifferent cause, the skill and cour- 
age repeatedly displayed would have been epic. 
Considering what these airships faced on every 
one of their later raids — what their commanders 
and crews must have known were the odds against 
them after the night when the destruction of the 
first Zeppelin over Cuffley, in September, 1916, 
proved that the British had effectually solved the 
problem of igniting the hydrogen of the inner bal- 
lonettes — one cannot but conclude that the morale 
of the whole personnel must have been very high 
during even this trying period. If it had not been 
high, there would undoubtedly have been mutinies 
at the airship stations, such as are known to have 
occurred on so many occasions among the subma- 
rine crews. Even in the light of present knowl- 
edge, there is nothing to indicate that there had 
ever been serious trouble in getting Zeppelin 
crews for the most hazardous of raids. So far as 
could be gathered from our visits to the great air- 
ship stations of the North Sea littoral, this very 
excellent morale prevailed to the last; indeed, 
practically everything seen indicated that it still 
prevails. 

Of the several German naval airship stations 
visited by parties from the Allied Commission, 
the most important were Althorn, Nordholz, and 
Tondern. The interest in the latter was largely 



124 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

sentimental, due to tlie fact that it was practically 
wiped out last summer as the result of a bombing 
raid by aeroplanes launched from the Furious. 
It was known that little had been done to rehabili- 
tate it as a service station since that time, and the 
Commission's airship experts ' desire to visit what 
was left of the sheds was actuated by a wish to see 
what damage had been done rather than by any 
feeling that the station really counted any longer 
as a base of Germany's naval air service. Our 
visit to the ruins of Tondern, and what we learned 
there of the way it was destroyed, is a story by 
itself, and I will tell it in a separate chapter. 

Germany had very ambitious plans for the de- 
velopment of the Althorn station, and it is prob- 
able at one time that it was intended that it should 
supersede even the mighty Nordholz as the pre- 
mier home of naval Zeppelins. If such were really 
the intention, however, there is no doubt that it 
was effectually put an end to by a great fire and 
explosion which occurred there about the middle 
of last year, the material destruction from which 
— in sheds and Zeppelins — was vastly greater even 
than that from the British raid on Tondern. The 
Germans speak of this disaster with a good deal 
of bitterness, usually alluding to the cause as 
** mysterious,'' but rather giving the impression 
that they believe it to have been the work of 



The Den of the Zeppelins 125 

' 'Allied agents. ' ' If this is true, the job will stand 
as a fair offset against any single piece of work 
of the same character that German agents perpe- 
trated in France, Britain, or America. Only the 
blowing up of the great Russian national arsenal 
in the second year of the war is comparable to it 
for the amount of material damage wrought. 
Althorn remained a station of some importance 
down to the end of the war, however, and that the 
Germans still expected to do important work from 
there was indicated by the fact that one of its new 
sheds housed the great '*L-71," the largest airship 
in the world at the present time. 

But it was in the great Nordholz station that 
the airship sub-commission was principally inter- 
ested, not only for what it was at the moment — 
incomparably the greatest and most modern of 
German Zeppelin aerodromes — but also for what 
had been accomplished from there in the past, and 
even for what might conceivably be done from 
there in the future. Nordholz is a name that 
would have been burned deep into the memories 
of South and East Coast Britons had it been 
known three years ago, as it is now, that practi- 
cally all of the Zeppelin raids over England were 
launched from there. The popular idea at the 
time — which even appears to have persisted with 
most Londoners down to the present — was that 



126 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

airship stations had been constructed in Belgium, 
and that these alternated with those of Germany 
in dispatching raiders across the North Sea to 
England. A single glimpse of such a station as 
Nordholz is enough to show that the huge amount 
of labour and expense involved in building even 
a comparatively temporary aerodrome fit for reg- 
ular Zeppelin work would have been fatal to the 
idea of establishing such installations in Belgium, 
or anywhere else where Germany did not feel cer- 
tain of remaining in fairly permanent control. 
The station at Jamboli, in Bulgaria, for instance, 
is known to have been able only to dispose of one 
or two Zeppelins, and considerable intervals be- 
tween flights were imperative for keeping them in 
trim. It would never have been equal to the strain 
of steady raiding. 

There were other German airship stations 
within cruising distance of England, but Nordholz 
was so much the best equipped, especially in the 
first years of the war when Zeppelin raiding was 
the most active, that the most of the work, and 
by long odds the most effective of it, was done 
from there. There were grim tales to be told by 
that band of hard-eyed, straight-mouthed, bull- 
necked pilots — all that survived some scores of 
raids over England and some hundreds of recon- 
naissance flights over the North Sea; — ^who re- 



The Den of the Zeppelins 127 

ceived and conducted round the Naval Commission 
party, though, unfortunately,, we did not meet 
upon a footing that made it possible more than to 
listen to the account of an occasional incident 
suggested by something we were seeing at the 
moment. 

The route which our party traversed from Wil- 
helmshaven to the Nordholz airship station — the 
latter lies six or eight miles south of the Elbe 
estuary in the vicinity of Cuxhaven — was a differ- 
ent one from any followed on our previous visits, 
all of which had taken us more to the south or 
east. It was through the same low-lying, dyked-in 
country, however, where the water difficulty, un- 
like most other parts of the world, was one of 
drainage rather than of irrigation. Great Dutch 
windmills turned ponderously under the impulse 
of the light sea-breeze, as they pumped the water 
oif the flooded land. Cultivation, as in the region 
traversed to the south, was at a standstill, but 
overflowing barns — great capacious structures 
they were, with brick walls and lofty thatched 
roofs — proved that the harvest had been a gener- 
ous one. 

Instead of routing our two-car special over the 
all-rail route via Bremen, distance and time were 
saved by leaving it at a small terminus opposite 
Bremerhaven, crossing to the latter by tug, and 



128 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

proceeding north in more or less direct line to our 
destination. Little time was lost in getting from 
one train to the other. The tug, which had been 
held in readiness for our arrival, cast off as soon 
as the last of the party had clambered over its side, 
and the short run across the grey-green tide of 
the estuary was made in less than a quarter of an 
hour. Four powerful army cars — far better ma- 
chines, these, than the dirigible junk heaps we had 
been compelled to use at Wilhelmshaven — were 
waiting beside the slip, and another ten minutes of 
what struck me as very fast and reckless driving, 
considering it was through the main streets of a 
good-sized city, brought us to the station and an- 
other two-car special. Both going and returning, 
it was the best ^^ clicking'* lot of connections any 
of the parties made in the course of the whole 
visit, showing illuminatingly what our ** hosts '* 
could do in that line when they were minded to. 
Swift as was our passage through the streets of 
Bremerhaven, there was still opportunity to ob- 
serve many evidences of the vigorous growth it 
had made the decade preceding the outbreak of 
the war, and of the plans that had been made in 
expectation of a continuation of that growth. 
Blocks and blocks of imposing new buildings — 
now but half -tenanted — and the nuclei of what had 
been budding suburbs were more suggestive of 



The Den of the Zeppelins 129 

the appearance of a Western American mush- 
room metropohs after the collapse of a boom than 
a town of Europe. The railway station — a fine 
example of Germany's so-called * ^ New Arf archi- 
tecture — in its spacious waiting-rooms, broad sub- 
ways, and commodious train sheds looked capable 
of serving the city of half a million or so which 
it had confidently been expected the empire 's sec- 
ond port would become at the end of another few 
years. As things have turned out, Bremerhaven 
will at least have the consolation of knowing that 
it is not likely to be troubled with *^ station 
crushes'' for some decades to come. 

The astonishingly well-dressed and orderly 
crowd of a thousand or more waiting outside the 
portal of the station in expectation of the arrival 
of a train-load of returning soldiers made no un- 
friendly demonstration of any character. On the 
contrary, indeed, as at Wilhelmshaven, a number 
of children waved their hands as our cars drove 
up, and a goodly number of men solemnly bared 
their heads as we filed past. The special which 
awaited us at a platform reached after walking 
through a long vaulted subway running beneath 
the tracks consisted, like the one we had left on 
the other side of the river, of an engine and two 
cars. The rolling stock of this one was in better 
shape than that of the other, however, and with a 



130 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

better maintained road-bed to run over, the last 
leg of our journey was covered at an average speed 
of over thirty miles an hour, quite the fastest we 
travelled by train anywhere in Germany. 

For the most of the way the line continued run- 
ning through mile after mile of water-logged, sea- 
level areas crossed by innumerable drainage ca- 
nals and bricked roadways gridironing possible 
inundation areas with their raised embankments. 
At the end of an hour, however, the patches of 
standing water disappeared, and presently the 
bulk of the great sheds of Nordholz began to notch 
the northern skyline, where they stood crowning 
the crest of the first rising ground in the littoral 
between the Dutch frontier and the Elbe. With 
only a minute or two of delay in the Nordholz 
yards, the train was switched to the airship sta- 
tion's own spur, and at the end of another mile 
had pulled up on a siding directly opposite the 
main entrance. 

The commander of the station, with two or 
three other officers, was waiting to receive us as 
we stepped out on the ground. Eanged up along- 
side this row of heel-clicking, frock-coated, be- 
medalled and be-sworded Zeppelin officers was an 
ancient individual of a type which seemed to re- 
call the fatherly old Jehus of the piping days of 
Oberammergau. Every time the officers saluted, 



The Den of the Zeppelins 131 

he raised his hat, howed low from the waist, and 
exclaimed, ^*Good morning to you, gentlemen.'' 
When the last of us had been thus greeted, he 
called out a comprehensive, ^ ^ This way to the car- 
riages, gentlemen," and trotted off ahead, bell- 
wether fashion, through the gate. 

Here we found waiting four small brakes and 
a diminutive automobile, the sum total of the sta- 
tion's resources in rapid transit, according to the 
commander. Getting into the motor to precede 
us as pilot, he asked the party to dispose itself as 
best it could in the horse-drawn vehicles. Then, 
with old **Jehu" holding the reins of the first 
vehicle and men in air-service uniform — ^utter 
strangers to horses they were, too — tooling the 
other three, we started off along a well-paved road. 

A long row of very attractive red brick-and-tile 
houses of agreeably varied design were apparently 
the homes of married officers. Our way led past 
only the first five or six of them, but a stirring of 
lace curtains in every one of these told that we 
were running the gauntlet of hostile glances all the 
way. One glowering Frau — though in the semi- 
negligee of a **Made-in-Germany" kimono of pale 
mauve, her Brunhildian brow was crowned with a 
** permanently Marcelled" coiffure of the kind one 
sees in hairdressers' windows — disdained all 
cover, and so stepped out upon her veranda just 



132 To Kiel in the '* Hercules'' 

in time to see the elder of her blonde-braided off- 
spring in the act of waving a Teddy Bear — or it 
may have been a woolly lamb or a dachshund — 
at the tail of the procession of invading Eng- 
Idnders. She was swooping — a mauve-tailed 
comet with a Gorgon head — on the luckless **fra- 
ternisatress'' as my brake turned a corner and 
the loom of a block of barracks shut **The Row*' 
from sight, but a series of shrill squeals, piercing 
through the raucous grind of steel tyres on 
asphalt pavement, told that punishment swift and 
terrible was being meted out. 

**More activity there than I saw in all of 
Bremerhaven, ' ' laconically observed the Yankee 
Ensign sitting next me. **Who said the German 
woman was lacking in temperament ? ' ' 

Driving through the barracks area — where all 
the men in sight invariably saluted or stood at 
attention as we passed — and down an avenue be- 
tween small but thickly set pines, the road de- 
bouched into the open, and for the first time we 
saw all the sheds of the great station at compara- 
tively close range. Then we were in a position 
to understand with what care the site had been 
chosen and laid out. Occupying the only rising 
ground near the coast south of the Kiel Canal, it 
is quite free from the constant inundations which 



The Den of the Zeppelins 133 

threaten the alluvial plain along the sea. The 
sheds are visible from a great distance, but it is 
only when one draws near them that their truly 
gigantic size becomes evident. Of modern build- 
ings of utility, such as factories and exhibition 
structures, I do not recall one that is so impressive 
as these in sheer immensity. Yet the proportions 
of the sheds are so good that constant comparison 
with some familiar object of known size, such as 
a man, alone puts them in their proper perspec- 
tive. 

The sheds are built in pairs, standing side by 
side, and on a plan which has brought each pair 
on the circumference of a circle two kilometres in 
diameter. The chord of the arc drawn from one 
pair of sheds to the next in sequence is a kilo- 
metre in length, while the same distance separates 
each pair on the circumference from the huge re- 
volving shed in the centre of the circle. The 
whole plan has something of the mystic symmetry 
of an ancient temple of the sun. Of the half- 
dozen pairs of sheds necessary to complete the 
circle, four had been constructed and were in use. 
Each ' shed was built to house two airships, or 
four for the pair. This gave a capacity of sixteen 
Zeppelins for the four pairs of sheds, while the 
two housed in the revolving shed in the centre 



134 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

brougM the total capacity of the station up to 
eighteen — a larger number, I believe, than were 
ever over England at one time. 

Scarcely less impressive than the immensity of 
the sheds and the broad conception of the general 
plan of the station was the solidity of construction. 
Everything, from the quarters of the men and the 
officers to the hangars themselves, seemed built 
for all time, and to play its part in the fulfilment 
of some far-reaching plan. Costly and scarce as 
asphalt must have been in Germany, the many 
miles of roads connecting the various sheds were 
laid deep with it, and, as I had a chance to see 
where repairs were going on, on a heavy base of 
concrete. The sheds were steel-framed, concrete- 
floored, and with pressed asbestos sheet figuring 
extensively in their sides. All the daylight ad- 
mitted (as we saw presently) filtered through 
great panes of yellow glass in the roof, shutting 
out the ultra-violet rays of the sun, which had 
been found to cause airship fabric to deteriorate 
rapidly. 

The barracks of the men were of brick and con- 
crete, and were built with no less regard for ap- 
pearance than utility. So, too, the officers ' quar- 
ters and the Casino, and the large and comfort- 
able-looking houses for married officers I have 
already mentioned. All had been built very re- 



The Den of the Zeppelins 135 

cently, many in the by no means mieff ective * ^ New 
Arf style, to the simple solidity of which the 
Germans seemed to have turned in reaction from 
the Gothic. Beyond all doubt Germany was plan- 
ning years ahead with Nordholz, both as to war 
and peace service. They were quite frank in 
speaking of the ambitions they still have in re- 
spect of the latter, and (from casual remarks 
dropped once or twice by officers) I should be very 
much surprised if their plans for developing the 
Zeppelin as a super-war machine have been en- 
tirely shelved. 

The road along which we drove to reach the 
first pair of sheds to be visited ran through ex- 
tensive plantations of scraggly screw-pine, which 
appear to have been set — before the site was 
chosen for an air station — for the purpose of bind- 
ing together the loose soil and preventing its 
shifting in the heavy winds. Wherever the trees 
had encroached too closely upon the hangars, the 
plantations had been burned off. Over one con- 
siderable area the accumulations of ash in the de- 
pressions showed the destruction to have been 
comparatively recent, and this I learned had been 
burned over, in the panic which followed the blow- 
ing up of the Tondern sheds by British bombing 
machines last summer, in order to minimize the 
risk from the raid which Nordholz itself never 



136 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules'' 

ceased to expect right down to the day of the 
armistice. 

The staggering size of the great sheds became 
more and more impressive as we drew nearer, and 
when the procession finally turned and went clat- 
tering down the roadway between one of the pairs, 
the towering walls to left and right blotted out the 
sky like the cliffs of a rocky canon. Halfway 
through this great defile the officers of the station 
were waiting to receive and conduct us round. A 
hard, fit, capable-looking lot of chaps they were. 
Every one of them had at least one decoration, 
most of them many, and among these were two or 
three Orders Pour de Merite, the German Y.C, 
One at least of them — the great long-distance 
pilot, Von Butlar — was famous internationally, 
and few among the senior of them (as I was as- 
sured shortly) but had been over England more 
than once. They were the best of Grermany's sur- 
viving Zeppelin pilots, and one was interested to 
compare the type with that of the pick of her sea- 
pilots as we had seen them at Norderney. 

Running my eye round their faces as the min- 
gled parties began moving slowly toward the side 
door of the first shed to be inspected, I recog- 
nized at once in these Zeppelin officers the same 
hard, cold, steady eyes, the same aggressive jaw, 
and the same wide, thin-lipped mouth that had 



The Den of the Zeppelins • 137 

predominated right through the officers we had 
met at Norderney. These, I should say, are char- 
acteristic of the great majority of the outstanding 
men of both of Germany's air services. The 
steady eye and the firm jaw are, indeed, charac- 
teristic of most successful flying men, but it is the 
*4iardness,'' not to say cruelty, of the mouth which 
differentiates the German from the high-spirited, 
devil-may-care air-warrior of England and Amer- 
ica. 

These Zeppelin pilots seemed to me to run 
nearer to the German naval officer type than did 
the seaplane officers. The latter were nearly al- 
ways slender of body, wiry and light of foot, where 
(though there were several exceptions, including 
the great Von Butlar) the former were mainly of 
generous girth, with the typical German bull neck 
corrugating into rolls of fat above the backs of 
their collars. A Major of the E.A.F., who had 
been walking at my side and doing a bit of * ^ sizing 
up ' ' on his own account, put the difference rather 
well when he said, as we waited our turn to pass 
in through the small side door of the great grey 
wall of the shed: **If I was taking temporary 
refuge in a hospital, convent, or orphan asylum 
during a German air raid, I'd feel a lot better 
about it if I knew that it was some of those sea- 
plane chaps flying overhead rather than some of 



138 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

this batch. That thick-set one there, with the cast 
in his eye and the corded neck, has a face that 
wouldn't need much make-up for the Hun villain 
in a Lyceum melodrama. Yes, I'm sure these 
Zepp. drivers will average a jolly lot *Hunnier' 
than the run of their seaplane men.'' 

Up to that moment my experience of German 
airships had been limited to the view of them as 
slender silver pencils of light gliding swiftly 
across the searchlight-slashed skies of London, 
and three or four inspections of the tangled 
masses of aluminium and charred wood which re- 
mained when ill-starred raiders had paid the su- 
preme penalty. I was indebted' to the Zeppelins 
for a number of thrills, but only two or three of 
them (and one was in the form of a bomb which 
gave me a shower bath of plate glass in Kings- 
way) were comparable to the sheer wave of amaze- 
ment which swept over me when, having passed 
from the cold grey light of the winter morning 
into the warm golden glow of the interior of the 
big shed to which we had come, I looked up and 
beheld the towering loom of the starboard side of 
**L-68," with the sweeping lines of her, fining to 
points at both ends, exaggerating monstrously a 
length which was sufficiently startling even when 
expressed in figures. The secret of the hold which 
the Zeppelin had for so long on the imagination of 



The Den of the Zeppelins 139 

the German people was not hard for me to under- 
stand after that. It was easy to see how they 
could have heen led to beheve that it could lay 
Paris and London in ruins, and that the very sight 
of it would in time cause the enemies of their coun- 
try to sue for peace. One saw, too, how hard it 
must have been for them finally to believe that 
the Zeppelin had been mastered by the aeroplane, 
and that the high hopes they had built upon it had 
really crashed with the fallen raiders. 

There were two Zeppelins in the shed we had 
entered — **L-68^' and another monster of practi- 
cally the same size. The former, with great ir- 
regularly shaped strips of fabric dangling all 
along its under side, suggested a gigantic shark 
in process of being ripped up the belly for skin- 
ning. Being deflated, the weight of its frame was 
supported by a number of heavy wooden props 
evenly distributed along either side from end to 
end. Its mate, on the other hand, being full of 
hydrogen and practically ready for flight, had to 
be prevented from rising and bumping against the 
yellow skylights by a series of light cables, the 
upper ends of which were attached at regular in- 
tervals along both sides of the framework, while 
below they were made fast to heavy steel shoes 
which ran in grooves set in the concrete floor. 
The latter contrivance — especially an arrange- 



140 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

ment for the instant shpping of the cable — was 
very cleverly devised and greatly interested the 
Allied experts. 

There were two or three things the popular 
mind had credited the modern Zeppelin with em- 
bodying which we did not find in these latest ex- 
amples of German airship development. One of 
these was an ^^ anti-bomb protector'' on the top, 
something after the style of the steel nets erected 
over London banks and theatres for the purpose 
of detonating dropped explosives before they pen- 
etrated the roof. The fact that attempts to de- 
stroy Zeppelins by bomb had invariably — with the 
exception of the one brought down by Warnef ord 
in Belgium in 1915 — resulted in failure, was doubt- 
less largely responsible for this belief in the exist- 
ence of a protecting net, whereas the reason for 
those failures is probably to be found in the fact 
that only about one bomb in a hundred will find 
enough resistance in striking an airship to deto- 
nate. At any rate, there were no indications 
that either the earlier or later Zeppelins we saw 
had ever been protected in this way. Indeed, we 
did not even seen a single one of the machine-guns, 
which every one had taken for granted were 
mounted on top of all Zeppelins to resist aeroplane 
attack, though these, of course, with their plat- 
forms, may well have been removed in the course 



The Den of the Zeppelins 141 

of the disarmament imposed by the armistice 
terms. 

Nor had these late airships the bright golden 
colour of those that one saw over London in the 
earlier raids. That the refulgent tawniness of 
them was not due entirely to the reflected beams of 
the searchlights was proved by the uncharred 
fragments of fabric one had picked up at Cuffley 
and Potters ' Bar. But the German designers had 
been giving a good deal of study to invisibility, 
since that time, with the result that these new 
airships were coloured over all their exposed sur- 
faces a dull slaty black that would hardly reflect 
a beam of bright sunshine. 

The cars, which were both smaller and lighter 
than those from the airships brought down in 
England, were all underslung, and none of them 
was enclosed in the framework, as had often been 
stated. Even these were not built entirely of 
metal, heavy fabric being used to close up all 
spaces where strength was not required. The 
bomb-dropping devices had been removed, but the 
numbered ** switchboard ' ' in the rearmost car, 
from which they could be released, still remained. 
The cars, free from every kind of protuberance 
that could meet the resistance of the air, were ef- 
fectively and gracefully ^^stream-lined.'' The 
framework and bodies of the cars were made of 



142 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

the light but strong ^'duraluimnuni" alloy, which 
the Germans have spent many years in perfecting 
for this purpose. A small fragment of strut 
which I picked up under *'L-68'' has proved, on 
comparison, considerably lighter in specific grav- 
ity than similar pieces from three of the Zeppelins 
brought down early in the war. Indeed, in spite 
of its admixture of heavier metals for ** stiffen- 
ing, ' ' the latest alloy seems scarcely heavier than 
aluminum itself. 

The inspection of an airship to see that it had 
been disarmed according to the provisions of the 
armistice was, as may be imagined, rather more 
of a job than a similar inspection of even a 
** giant'* seaplane. In a Zeppelin that is more 
or less the same size as the Mauretania the dis- 
tances are magnificent, and while most of the in- 
spection was confined to the cars, that of the wire- 
less, with a search for possible concealed machine- 
gun mountings, involved not a little climbing and 
clambering. One's first sight of the interior of 
a deflated Zeppelin — in an inflated one the bulging 
ballonettes obstruct the view considerably — is 
quite as impressive in its way as the premier sur- 
vey of it from the outside. No 'tween decks pros- 
pect in the largest ship afloat, cut down as it is by 
bulkheads, offers a fifth of the unbroken sweep of 
vision that one finds opened before him as he 



The Den of the Zeppelins 143 

climbs up inside the tail of a modern airship. Al- 
though airy ladders and soaring lengths of frame- 
work intervene, they are no more than lace-work 
fretting the vast space, and the eye roams free to 
where the side-braces of the narrow **walk'^ seem 
to run together in the nose. Only, so consummate 
the illusion wrought on the eye and brain by the 
strange perspective, that *^ meeting poinf seems 
more like six hundred miles away than six hundred 
feet. The effect is more like looking to the end of 
the universe than to the end of a Zeppelin. No 
illusion ever devised on the stage to give ^* dis- 
tance" to a scene could be half so convincing. 
All that was ** cosmic'' in you vibrated in sympa- 
thy, and it took but a shake of the reins of the 
imagination to fancy yourself tripping off down 
that unending '^Eoad to Anywhere'' to the music 
of the Spheres. You — 

**Gee, but ain't that a peach of a little *Gyro'?" 
filtering up through the fabric beneath my feet 
awakened me to the fact that the inspection of 
**L-68" having reached the rearmost car, was 
near its finish. Clambering back to earth, I found 
the party just reassembling to go to the carriages 
for the drive to the great revolving shed, which 
was the next to be visited. 

Its central revolving shed is perhaps the most 
arresting feature of the Nordholz station. It is 



144 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

built on the lines of a ^^twin'' engine turntable, 
with each track housed over, and with every di- 
mension multiplied twenty-five or thirty-fold. 
The turning track is laid in a bowl-shaped depres- 
sion about ten feet deep and seven hundred feet 
in diameter. The floors of both sheds (which 
stand side by side, with only a few feet between) 
are flush with the level of the ground, so that the 
airships they house may be run out and in. with- 
out a jolt. The turning mechanism, which is in 
the rear of the sheds and revolves with them, is 
entirely driven by electricity. The shifting of a 
lever sets the whole great mass in motion, and 
stops it to a millimetre of the point desired, the 
later being indicated on a dial by a needle showing 
the direction of the wind. 

The Germans assured us — and on this point the 
British and American airship experts were in full 
agreement with them— rthat the revolving shed is 
absolutely the ideal installation, as it makes it 
possible to launch or house a ship directly into 
the wind, and so allows them to be used on days 
when it would be out of the question to launch 
them from, or return them to, an ordinary hangar. 
The one point against it seems to be its almost pro- 
hibitive cost. This central shed at Nordholz was 
designed some time before the war, and was com- 
pleted a year or so after its outbreak. The Ger- 



The Den of the Zeppelins ^ 145 

mans did not tell what it had cost, but they did 
say that the latter was so great — ^both in money 
and in steel deflected from other uses — that they 
had not contemplated the building of another dur- 
ing the continuance of the war. 

Another interesting admission of a Zeppelin of- 
ficer at Nordholz was to the effect that one of their 
greatest difficulties had arisen through the fact 
that it had been found practicable and desirable to 
increase the size of airships far more rapidly than 
had been contemplated when most of the existing 
sheds were designed. Thus many hangars — even 
at Nordholz, where practice was most advanced — 
had become almost useless for housing the latest 
Zeppelins. The proof of this was seen at one of 
the older sheds which we visited, where both of the 
airships it contained had been cut off fore and aft 
to reduce their lengths sufficiently to allow them 
inside. Thirty or forty feet of the framework of 
the bows and sterns of each, stripped of their 
covering fabric, were standing in the corners. 
They assured us that while an airship thus 
^* bobbed'' at both ends was not necessarily con- 
sidered out of commission, it would take several 
days of rush work to get it ready for flight, and 
that during most of this time sixty to eighty feet 
of it — the combined length of the nose and tail 
which had to be cut off to bring it inside — would 



146 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

have to remain sticking out, exposed to the 
weather. 

To any one who, like myself, was not an airship 
expert, but had been *^ among those present'* at 
a number of the earlier raids on London, the last 
shed visited was the most interesting of all, for it 
contained what is in many respects Germany's 
most historic Zeppelin, the famous **L-14.'' 
Twenty-four bombing flights over England were 
claimed for this remarkable veteran, besides many 
scores of reconnaissance voyages. All of the sur- 
viving pilots appeared to have an abiding belief 
in her invulnerability — a not unnatural attitude 
of the fatalist toward an instrument which has 
succeeded in defying fate. This is the way one of 
them expressed it, who came and stood by my side 
during the quarter-hour in which the inspecting 
officers were climbing about inside the glistening 
yellow shell of the historic raider in an endeavour 
to satisfy themselves, that she was, temporarily 
at least, incapable of further activities : — 

**It will sound strange to you to hear me say 
it,'' he said, **but it is a fact that all of the officers 
and men at Nordholz firmly believed that L-14 
could not be destroyed. Always we gave her the 
place of honour in starting first away for Eng- 
land, and most times she was the last to come back 
— of those that did come back. After a while, no 



The Den of the Zeppelins 147 

matter how long she was late, we always said, * Oh, 
but it is old L-14; no use to worry about her; she 
will come home at her own time. ' And come home 
she always did. All of our greatest pilots flew in 
her at one time or another and came back safe. 
Then they were given newer and faster ships, and 
sometimes they came home, and sometimes they 

did not. , who was experimenting with one 

of the smaller swift types of half-rigids when it 
was brought down north of London — the first to 
be destroyed over England — had flown L-14 many 

times, and come home safe, and so had , our 

greatest pilot, who was also lost north of London, 
very near where the other was brought down, and 
where we think you had some kind of trap. L-14 
saw these and many other Zeppelins fall in flames 
and the more times she came home the more was 
our belief in her strength. The pilot who flew her 
was supposed to take more chances (because she 
really ran no risks, you see), and if you have ever 
read of how one Zeppelin in each raid always 
swooped low to drop her bombs, you now know 
that she was that one. Because we had this super- 
stitious feeling about her we were very careful 
that, in rebuilding and repairing her, much of her 
original material should be left, so that whatever 
gave her her charmed life should not be removed. 
Although our duraluminum of the present is much 



148 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

lighter and stronger than the first we made, L-14 
still has most of her original framework ; and, al- 
though improved technical instruments have been 
installed, all her cars are much as when she was 
built. You will see how much clumsier and heav- 
ier they are than those of the newer types. And 
now, for some months, we have used L-14 as a 
^school' ship, in which to train our young pilots. 
You see, her great traditions must prove a won- 
derful inspiration to them.'' 

A few minutes later I had a hint of one type of 
this * inspiration, ' ' when a pilot (who had fallen 
into step with me as we took a turn across the 
fields on foot to see the hangars of the ** protect- 
ing flight" of aeroplanes) mentioned that he had 
taken part in a number of the 1916 raids over the 
Midland industrial centres. Knowing the Stygian 
blackness in which this region was wrapped dur- 
ing all of the Zeppelin raiding time, I asked him 
if he had not found it difficult to locate his objec- 
tives in a country which was plunged in complete 
darkness. 

**Not so difficult as you might think,'' was the 
reply. *^ There were always the rivers and ca- 
nals, which we knew perfectly from careful study. 
Besides, a town is a very large mark, and you 
seem to * sense' the nearness of great masses of 
people, anyhow. Perhaps the great anxiety they 



The Den of the Zeppelins 149 

are in estabhshes a sort of mental contact with 
you, whose brain is very tense and receptive. 
Effective bombing is very largely a matter of psy- 
chology, you see." 

I saw. Indeed, I think I saw rather more than 
he intended to convey. 

The inspection over and everything having been 
found as stipulated in. the armistice, we were con- 
ducted to the Officers^ Casino for lunch. Each 
member of the party, as had been the practice 
from the outset, having brought a package of 
sandwiches from the ship in his pocket, it was 
intimated to the Commander of the station that 
we would not need to trouble him to have the 
luncheon served, which he said had been pre- 
pared for us. The same situation had arisen at 
Norderney and several other of the stations pre- 
viously visited, and in each of these instances our 
** hosts'' of the day had acquiesced in the plainly 
expressed desire of the senior officer of the party 
that we should confine our menu to what we car- 
ried in our own ** nose-bags.'' Nordholz, how- 
ever — quite possibly with no more than an en- 
larged idea of what were its duties under the cir- 
cumstances — was not to be denied. A couple of 
plates of very appetizing German red-cabbage 
sauerkraut, with slices of ham and blood sausage, 
were waiting upon a large sidetable as we entered 



150 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

the reception-room, and to these, as fast as a very 
nervous waiter could bring them in, were added 
the following: a large loaf of pumpernickel, a 
pitcher of chicken consomme, sl huge beefsteak, 
with a fried egg sitting in the middle of it, for each 
member of the party, two dishes of apple sauce, 
and eight bottles of wine — four of white and four 
of red. The steaks — an inch thick, six inches in 
diameter, and grilled to a turn — ^were quite the 
largest pieces of meat I had seen served outside 
of Ireland since the war. The hock bore the label 
^^Durkheimer,^' and the other bottles, which were 
of non-German origin, ^ ^ Ungarischer Rotwein/^ 
** Although I'd hate to hurt their feelings," said 
the senior officer of the party, surveying the Gar- 
gantuan repast with a perplexed smile, *^I should 
like to confine myself to my sandwiches and leave 
a note asking them to forward this to some of our 
starving prisoners. Since weVe been feeding 
their pilots and commissioners in the Hercules, 
however, I suppose there's no valid reason why 
we should hesitate to partake of this banquet. 
I'll leave you free to decide for yourselves what 
you want to do on that score." We did. It was 
the American Ensign who, smacking his lips over 
the last of his steak, pronounced it the best **hunk 
of cow" he had had since he was at a Mexican 



The Den of the Zeppelins 151 

barbecue at Coronado ; but it was the General who 
had a second helping of apple sauce, and won- 
dered how they made it so * * smooth and free from 
lumps/' and what it was they put in it to give that 
<<very delicate flavour.'' 

Hung around all four walls of the room were 
perhaps a dozen oil paintings of flying officers in 
uniform, and although they bore no names, we 
knew (from what had been told us of a similar dis- 
play in the reception-room at Norderney) that 
they were portraits of pilots who had lost their 
lives in active service. One — a three-quarters 
length of a small wiry man, with gimlet eyes and 
a jaw that would have made that of a wolf -trap 
look soft and flexible in comparison — I recognized 
at once as having been reproduced in the German 
papers as the portrait of the great Schramm, who 
had been killed when his Zeppelin was brought 
down at Potters' Bar. Another — the bust of a 
man of rather a bulkier figure than the first, but 
with a face a shade less brutal — was also strangely 
familiar. I felt sure I had seen before that terri- 
bly determined jaw, that broad nose with its wide 
nostrils, that receding brow, with the bony lumps 
above the eyes, and the tentacles of my memory 
went groping for when and where, while I went 
on sipping my glass of Rotwein and listening to 



152 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

Major P ^ and Ensign E comparing sen- 
sations on dropping from airplanes with para- 
chutes. 

*^If the Hnns," the former was saying, *^had 
had proper parachutes most of the crews of the 
Zepps brought down in England could have landed 
safely instead of being burned in the air. Of the 
remains of the crew of the one brought down at 
Cuffley, hardly a fragment was recognizable as 
that of a man. But if — '' 

Like a flash it came to me. The warm, com- 
fortable room, with its solid ^'New Art'* furniture 
and the table stacked with plates of food and wine 
bottles, faded away, and I saw a tangled heap of 
metal and burning debris, sprawling across a 
stubble field and hedgerow, and steaming in the 
cold early morning drizzle that was quenching its 
still smouldering fires. Five hours previously 
that wreckage had been a raiding Zeppelin, charg- 
ing blindly across London, pursued by search- 
lights and gun-fire. I bad watched the ghostly 
shape disappear in the darkness as it shook off 
the beams of the searchlights, and when it ap- 
peared again it was as a descending comet of 
streaming flame streaking earthward across the 

1 Major Pritchard, who subsequently distinguished himself by 
landing from R-34, after its transatlantic flight, with a para- 
chute. 



The Den of the Zeppelins 153 

north-western heavens. After walking all the 
rest of the night — with a Hft from an early morn- 
ing milk cart — I had arrived on the scene at day- 
break, and before the cordon of soldiers which 
later kept the crowds back had been drawn. They 
had just cut a way through the wreckage to one 
of the cars, and were cooling down the glowing 
metal with a stream pumped by a little village 
fire-engine. Then they began taking out what re- 
mained of the bodies of the crew. Some had been 
almost entirely consumed by the fierce flames, and 
it is literally true that many of the blackened frag- 
ments were hardly recognizable as human. But 
there was one notable exception. By a miracle, 
the chest and head of the body of what had un- 
doubtedly been the commanding officer had been 
spared the direct play of the flames. The fingers 
gripping the steering wheel were charred to the 
bone, but the upper part of the tunic was so little 
scorched that it still held the Iron Cross pinned 
into it. The blonde eyebrows, beneath the bony 
cranial protuberances, were scarcely singed, and 
even the scowl and the tightly compressed lips 
seemed to express intense determination rather 
than death agony. That portrait — and doubtless 
most of the others that looked down upon our 
strange luncheon party that day at Nordholz — 
must have been painted from life. 



VI 

MERCHANT SHIPPIKG 

The difference between the work of the Shipping 
Board of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission 
and that of the other sub-commissions was well 
defined by one of its members when he facetiously 
described it as **the only branch of the business 
that pays dividends.'' The work of the sub-com- 
missions for the inspection of warships, seaplane 
and airship stations and forts, in that it was for 
the purpose of seeing that certain disarmament 
or demolition had been carried out, was largely 
destructive; that of the Shipping Board, on the 
other hand, which had as its end the return to the 
Allies of all of their merchant ships interned in 
German harbours, was constructive. The Ship- 
ping Board began to **pay dividends'' (in the 
form of steamers dispatched for home ports) al- 
most from the day of the arrival of the Hercules 
in Wilhelmshaven, and these continued steadily 
until the last of the interned ships surviving — a 
number had, unfortunately, been lost in mine- 
sweeping and other dangerous work in which the 
Germans had employed them — had found its way 

154 



Merchant SMpping 155 

back to resume its place as a carrier of men and 
merchandise and restore the heavily depleted ton- 
nage of the country to which it belonged. 

At the outbreak of the war there were ninety- 
six Allied vessels in German harbours, and all of 
these were promptly placed under embargo. Of 
these, eighty were British, fourteen Belgian, and 
two French. As all of the French and Belgian 
ships were small craft, their tonnage was practi- 
cally negligible. Besides these embargoed ships, 
the Allied Commission had been directed to de- 
mand and arrange for the return of the thirty-one 
— twenty-one British, eight Belgian, one Ameri- 
can, and one Brazilian — Allied ships which had 
been condemned in German Prize Courts since the 
outbreak of the war. Ten of these, it was subse- 
quently learned when the question came up in con- 
ference, had been sunk, the Germans having made 
a practice of using Allied ships in their hands for 
all work involving great risk. 

The question of the return of mercantile ton- 
nage was taken up in the course of the first con- 
ference in the Hercules at Kiel. Admiral Goette 
was requested to produce a complete list of all 
Allied and American ships lying at the time in 
German ports, including all mercantile vessels 
which had been condemned in Prize Courts. This 



156 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

list was to show clearly which vessels were con- 
sidered seaworthy, and if unseaworthy, from what 
cause. It was also requested that information 
should be given as to which of these ships were 
fitted for mine-seeking or mine-sweeping, as it was 
planned to leave these temporarily in German 
hands in order to facilitate the efforts she was 
supposed to be making to clear the way for navi- 
gation. It was directed that ships ready to take 
the sea should be bunkered and ballasted at once, 
and that towage should be provided for sailing 
ships. All explosives were to be removed, and 
the Germans were ordered to provide a steamer 
to bring back the crews from the ports at which 
the embargoed ships had been delivered — the 
Tyne, in case of British vessels, and Dunkerque 
for French. 

In respect to the ships considered unseaworthy. 
Admiral Goette was requested to arrange for all 
machinery, boilers, tanks, and spaces to be opened 
up, and the equipment made ready for inspection 
by the Sub-Commission for Shipping. Following 
this inspection, immediate facilities for dry 
docking and the carrying out of such repairs 
as the Sub-Commission considered necessary 
to prepare each vessel for sea were to be 
provided. 



Merchant Shipping 157 

Although more than three weeks had passed 
since the signing of the armistice, Admiral Goette 
admitted at once on the presentation of these de- 
mands that not only had no seaworthy Allied ship 
started on its voyage home, but that nothing what- 
ever had been done in the way of repairing any 
of those not seaworthy. He agreed, however, to 
do what he could to expedite matters from that 
time on in the case of the embargoed ships, but 
protested that, as the ships condemned in the 
Prize Courts had, according to German law, ceased 
to be Allied vessels, he had no authority to de- 
liver them. On being told that the Allied Com- 
mission had been appointed to deal with the terms 
of the armistice, not to discuss matters of German 
or any other law, he finally gave way and agreed 
to furnish a list of the prize ships. He made the 
reservation, however, that the ** question of legal- 
ity,'' since it did not concern the conferring com- 
missions, should be taken up later between the in- 
terested Governments. 

Indeed, protests, as preliminaries to acqui- 
escence, formed the major part of the German 
notes on the shipping question, as will be seen 
from the following extracts. **I herewith bring 
officially to your notice,'' the President of the 
German Sub-Commission wrote after the first con- 



158 To Kiel in the ''Hercules'' 

ference, (1) ^Hliat we do not recognize the obliga- 
tions demanded by the Allies to deliver embargo 
ships on the 17th December by the fact that we are 
willing to deliver them at the earliest possible mo- 
ment ; and (2) *^that embargo ships proceeding 
out at the request of the Allies without having 
been reconditioned in a manner to put them in the 
same condition in which they were at the begin- 
ning of the war will leave prematurely under pro- 
test. Germany declines any further obligations 
with regard to these ships.'' Writing after the 
first extension of the armistice and referring to 
that fact, he intimates that *Hhe period for ful- 
filling the provisions of Article XXX'' (the repair 
of ships) *4s also prolonged until January 17, 
1919. Accordingly Germany is not obliged to 
hand over the interned ships before the 17th Jan- 
uary. In spite of this Germany will make every 
endeavour in the future also to deliver these in- 
terned ships as soon as possible, and, as hitherto, 
will seek to carry out the terms of the armistice 
most loyally. . . . Without being under any obli- 
gation to do so, and merely in order to furnish 
further proofs of the loyal and business-like in- 
tentions of carrying out the terms of the armistice, 
measures have been taken for carrying on recon- 
ditioning, as far as that is possible and without 



Merchant Shipping 159 

prejudice, in accordance with the newest regu- 
lations of the British Lloyd. ' * 

The same formula, it will be observed, was fol- 
lowed in connection with each subject under con- 
sideration. There was first the protest, then an 
intimation that the wish of the Allies should be 
carried out in spite of the fact there was no obli- 
gation to do so, and finally the invariable * Spatting 
of themselves on the back" on the part of the Ger- 
mans for the * Royalty of spirit ' ' thus displayed. 

There was a subtle appeal to British sportsman- 
ship in this paragraph from one of the communi- 
cations of the President of the German Shipping 
Commission. *'I again request you to signify 
your approval that the German embargo steamer, 
Marie (ex Dave Hill), now lying in Batavia, in 
recognition of her signal services during the war, 
both from the military point of view and seaman- 
ship, should be permitted first to put in with her 
crew to a German port; the ship will then, after 
handing over her German fittings, be delivered as 
quickly as arranged in the Tyne. * ' 

It was not stated what the ** signal services'' 
of the Marie had been in the war, nor for whom 
they had been performed ; but I am under the im- 
pression she was the ship which was credited with 
the very fine exploit of running the British block- 



160 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

ade of East Africa, delivering a cargo of arms 
and munitions to Von Letow, and then making 
her escape to the Dutch Indies. As this cargo 
was the one thing which enabled the East African 
campaign to be carried on to the end of the war 
(when it must otherwise inevitably have termi- 
nated a year or two earlier), there can be no two 
ways of looking at the ** signal service'^ the Marie 
performed — for the Germans. 

Owing to the difficulty in securing crews to take 
the ships to the Tyne, Admiral Goette requested 
that the Allied Commission should furnish in ad- 
vance a guarantee of safety for those who could 
be induced to make the voyage. Admiral Brown- 
ing ^s reply was a counter-demand for a guarantee 
of safety for the parties landing from the Hercu- 
les to carry out their inspections of German ships 
and air stations. ^^The word of my Commission 
is given here and now,'' he said, ^4n the presence 
of many witnesses, for the security of any Ger- 
man subject who may, in the course of the execu- 
tion of the armistice, land in Great Britain. It is 
not customary to give written assurances regard- 
ing the honourable observation of the law of na- 
tions, but in the case of Germany we are obliged to 
ask for guarantees in writing because of the de- 
scription which has been furnished us of the state 
of the country. We are obliged to ask before we 



Merchant Shipping 161 

take any steps to see that the terms of the armis- 
tice are executed, that the parties should he ahle to 
perform their duties without danger, let, or hin- 
drance. ' ' 

Admiral Goette conceded this demand, and then 
went on to press his own in a statement highly illu- 
minative of the abject position the German naval 
authorities found themselves in their relations 
with both the men of the warships and merchant 
sailors. *^I wish to explain," he said, **that the 
request which we make is not to be construed into 
an expression of suspicion or distrust. It is 
merely in the interests of the men themselves, as 
we experienced in the case of the personnel of the 
submarines taken to English ports that the men 
were obviously under great apprehension that 
something might happen to them on coming into 
English parts. The guarantee is merely wanted 
as something definite to show the crews, as we 
have great difficulty in getting the men to believe 
us. That is why we also suggest that the German 
Commission should receive the minutes of the 
conference, as they would be quite enough for our 
purpose in order to be able to show the men in 
print that the declaration has been actually 
made. ' * 

The mutual guarantees were subsequently given 
in writing as follows :— 



162 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

GUABANTEE BY THE GOVERNMENT AT BeELIN AS TO 

THE Safety of Membebs op the Allied Com- 
mission DUBING THEIB StAY IN GERMANY. 

Berlin. 
December 6, 1918. 
Foreign Office. 
No. 172192. 
The safety of the members of the Allied Com- 
mission and of the representatives of the United 
States is guaranteed by the Government of the 
State for the whole extent of German territory. 
All representatives and functionaries of the Ad- 
ministration of the State, the Federal States and 
Municipalities of the Army and of the Navy are 
requested to give them every protection and to 
assist them in every way in the unhindered exe- 
cution of their work. 
The Government of the State. 

{Signed) Ebebt. 
Haase. 

Guarantee as to Security of German Crews op 
Merchant Vessels 

H.M.S. Hercules. 
December 6, 1918. 
The Allied Naval Armistice Commission. 
No. 0379. 

In reply to your verbal request of yesterday, 
5th December, 1918, we hereby authorize you to 



Merchant Shipping 163 

communicate to those concerned our assurance 
that the security of the crews sent over in mer- 
chant vessels, restored under Article XXX, Terms 
of Armistice, will be properly safeguarded on 
their arrival in British or French ports. 

A copy of this document will be forwarded to 
the Admiralty in London and to the Ministry of 
Marine in Paris accordingly. 

(Signed) M. E. Browning, Vice- Admiral, 
{Signed) M. F. A. G-easset, Contre-Amiral. 

To Rear-Admiral Ernst Goette. 

Guarantees having been provided, the follow- 
ing instructions were handed to the German Com- 
mission regarding the carrying out of inspections 
under the terms of the armistice : — 

1. The Allied Naval Commission shall be re- 
ceived on board each mercantile vessel to be in- 
spected by officers of approximately equivalent 
rank and conducted through the vessel, visiting 
such places and compartments as the Allied Com- 
mission may wish. 

2. All compartments are to be adequately 
lighted. 

3. All vessels shall be cleared of men before 
and during the inspection, with the exception of 
those necessary to open up machinery, doors, 
hatches, etc. 



164 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

4. If guns are mounted they are to be uncovered, 
and all explosives removed from the vessel. 

The Allied inspection parties were instructed 
as follows : — 

(a) To satisfy themselves that all Allied vessels 
are bunkered, ballasted, and sufficiently manned 
for the passage to the Tyne, in the case of British 
and Belgian vessels, and to Dunkerque, in the case 
of French vessels. 

(b) To ensure that the necessary repairs and 
dry docking of unseaworthy ships are carried out 
by the German authorities. 

(c) To ascertain that sufficient deck and engine 
stores are provided for the passage. 

(d) That all ships' papers, including Log Book 
and Eegister, confiscated on internment are re- 
turned. 

(e) That ammunition and explosives are landed 
from the vessels which have been used for war 
purposes. 

The arrival of the lists of embargo and prize 
ships showed them to be scattered about among a 
large number of ports on both the North Sea and 
the Baltic. As lack of time precluded the possi- 
bility of visiting Danzig or any other Baltic ports 
east of Kiel, it was arranged that all seaworthy 
ships in these ports should proceed to Kiel for 
inspection. After completing the inspection of 



Merchant Shipping 165 

the five ships in Wilhelmshaven (two of which 
were found to have machinery defects which made 
it impossible to dehver them without extensive re- 
pairs), the Shipping Board departed by train for 
Hamburg and Bremerhaven, where the greater 
part of their work was to be done. Before they 
rejoined the Hercules three days later at Kiel 
over thirty British ships had been inspected and 
the preliminary steps taken for their return to 
the Tyne. 

Admiral Goette's report at the first conference 
respecting conditions at Hamburg and the vicin- 
ity had made it appear probable that a visit to the 
Elbe would be entirely out of the question, and 
even after guarantees of safety had arrived it 
still seemed that venturing there would be at- 
tended by uncertainty if not danger. **In the 
Elbe,'* the President of the German Commission 
had said, ** power is entirely in the hands of the 
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, and Naval Offi- 
cers have no authority or influence whatever. 
One of the chief supports of the Workmen's and 
Soldiers' Council is the light cruiser Augsburg. 
There are also some torpedo-boats, mine-sweeping 
vessels and other small craft there which should be 
disarmed; but officers at Wilhelmshaven have no 
power to see to it, nor can they give any definite 
information as to what is there. . . . The Elbe is 



166 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

much less under the influence of the Berlin Gov- 
ernment than either Wilhelmshaven or Kiel. The 
Elbe Republic appears to have been much more 
radical than the others from the start, and has 
from the beginning of the Revolution refused to 
co-operate with the Naval Officers, while such co- 
operation was at once in effect in Wilhelmshaven 
and Kiel." 

It is by no means improbable that Admiral 
Goette was quite sincere in this sununary of con- 
ditions on the Elbe ; indeed, so far as the lack of 
authority on the part of Naval Officers was con- 
cerned, it was an accurate statement of the case. 
But in assuming that this would necessarily make 
it impossible for the Allied Shipping Board to 
carry out their work he proved quite wrong. 
Contemptuous as they were of their ex-officers, the 
men, far from displaying any desire to interfere 
with the work of the Commission, proved them- 
selves no less willing than their mates in Wil- 
helmshaven to help in any way they could. The 
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council took over the 
protection of the party from the moment of its 
arrival, and, save for a single incident which could 
hardly have been classed as ** preventable,'' noth- 
ing of an untoward nature occurred in the course 
of the visit. 

At Hamburg the party put up at the Hotel At- 




' IN THE ELBE, HAMBURG 




RAILROAD STATION AT HAMBURG 



Merchant Shipping 167 

lantic, where they reported that their comfort was 
extremely well looked after in every way. Occu- 
pying a wing to themselves and using a private 
dining-room, they saw little of the other guests. 
They were not allowed to linger in the foyer or any 
of the public rooms on the ground floor, and as 
soon as they had reached their rooms an armed 
guard of the Workmen and Soldiers took station 
at the entrance to the corridor. These precau- 
tions appeared quite unnecessary, as no signs of 
unfriendliness of any kind were in evidence. 

The rooms were large and furnished with all 
their pre-war luxuriousness. The linen was 
abundant and of fine quality. The steam heaters 
had to be turned off to prevent the rooms becoming 
overheated. The response from the hot-water 
taps was immediate. The brass fittings were still 
in place, and there were no signs of ersatz towels, 
sheets, or even lace curtains. Soap was the only 
thing missing, but that difficulty was common to 
all Germany. Food (even on one of the days 
which was meatless) was both abundant and 
wholesome — **well up to the average in a first- 
class English hotel,'' as one of the members put 
it. There was an ample and varied wine list to 
order from, including — ^besides many Ehine and 
Hungarian brands — several French and Italian 
brandies and liqueurs. There was some discus- 



168 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

sion over the cigars, the only point upon which the 
Commission were unanimous being that they were 
not tobacco, and that any member desiring to ex- 
periment in the effect of them upon a human being 
should do so upon himself, and in his own room. 
German ** substitute ' ' tobacco looks better than it 
smokes ; in fact, the only way in which the Work- 
men *s and Soldiers' guards attached to our par- 
ties were in the least obnoxious was through put- 
ting up ** smoke barrages," and even these were 
avoidable except in turrets, magazines, shaft tun- 
nels, and other enclosed spaces. 

The inspection of the twenty-four British ships 
in the Elbe revealed the fact that it had been the 
German practice to convert the best of the em- 
bargo steamers into mine-layers, net-layers, sea- 
plane carriers, and other types of war auxiliaries. 
These had been kept in the best of condition, and, 
allowing for the hard service they had been en- 
gaged in, were in practically as good shape as 
when first seized. The second-grade ^steamers 
and sailing vessels had merely been laid up and 
left to go to rack and ruin. Stripped of every- 
thing in the way of metal or gear that was likely 
to prove of use elsewhere, unpainted, uncared-for 
and covered with four-and-a-half years' accumu- 
lation of rust and filth, they presented a sorry 
sight. Although yielding little in the way of 



Merchant Shipping 169 

metal or technical instruments, the sailing ships 
had furnished useful loot in the form of hempen 
ropes and canvas, of both of which they were 
stripped to the last ravellings. 

There was one very interesting discovery made 
in connection with the inspection of these laid-up 
ships in the Elbe. A number of them were foimd 
to have been filled with concrete, with' the evident 
intention of using them as block ships. Naturally, 
no explanation of what had been in the wind to 
prompt this action was volunteered, but the fact 
that the work had been done at a comparatively 
recent date pointed strongly to the probability that 
the Germans, stung to the quick by the blocking of 
Zeebrugge and Ostend, were preparing a reply, 
most likely against the entrance to the Tyne. One 
has only to look at the chart to understand that 
the latter is a readily ^^blockable^' estuary — to 
any adequately equipped force able to reach the 
proper point. Needless to say, such a contingency 
was not unprovided against, and it would have 
been a near-miracle if even the most dare-devil 
leadership could have brought such a force half- 
way across the North Sea. Whether the armis- 
tice put an end to uncompleted preparations, or 
whether the plan was given up in despair before 
that time (perhaps through a failure to secure 
the necessary force of volunteers), there was noth- 



170 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

ing to indicate, though doubtless revelations 
throwing light on this interesting mystery will be 
forthcoming from Germany before long. 

Fortunately, the concrete had been put into 
these ships in the form of blocks instead of being 
poured, so that the clearing of their holds was not 
a serious matter. 

The drives in motor-cars through the streets of 
Hamburg revealed the same well-dressed, well-fed 
crowds which had been so much in evidence in 
Wilhelmshaven, and not even in the docks or ship- 
yards were there any signs of the starvation we 
had been assured prevailed in all the great indus- 
trial centres. The people were mildly curious 
but not in the least unfriendly. The only occasion 
on which anything unpleasant occurred was when 
a navvy, splashed by the mud from one of the lead- 
ing cars, petulantly slammed his shovel through 
the glass of the next in line. The nerves and 
tempers of the three French shipping commission- 
ers were the only things beside the glass which 
suffered seriously as a consequence of this contre- 
temps. The Workmen ^s and Soldiers' guards 
promptly asserted their authority by arresting the 
captious culprit, profuse apologies for the indig- 
nity were offered by the German officers conduct- 
ing the party at the time, and later the President 
of their Shipping Commission called on Com- 



Merchant Shipping 171 

modore Bevan at the hotel to make formal expres- 
sion of regrets. 

There was a refreshing naivete in the explana- 
tion offered by one of the German officers of the 
reason for this little incident. **It was all the 
fault of the chauffeur, ' ' he said. ^ ^ The man used 

to drive for Admiral X of the General Staff, 

and he forgot that he must no longer let his car 
throw mud on the street workmen. ' ' 

The German naval officer who received the Al- 
lied party on one of the British merchantmen was 
found in a state of considerable excitement. He 
had been fired at from the darkness the night be- 
fore, he said, and missed by a hair. Interpreting 
this as a warning against wearing his naval uni- 
form ashore, he had dressed in civil attire that 
morning, brought his uniform along in a parcel, 
and changed into it on board. 

** You'd pity any one but a Hun for having to do 
a thing like that, ' ' was the dry comment of one of 
the British members of the party when this tale 
of woe was translated to him. 

An instance of the unquenchable optimism of 
the German industrialist regarding the eagerly 
awaited future when the seas and the markets of 
the world are again open to him was furnished 
in the course of a. visit to the great Blohm and 
Voss yards, which occupy about the same position 



172 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

on the Elbe as do those of John Brown or Fair- 
fields on the Clyde, or Harland and Wolff at Bel- 
fast. Several of the embargo ships were under- 
going repairs here, and in going over one of these 
it was pointed out by Commodore Bevan that it 
ought to be ready to put to sea some days inside 
the limit set by the Germans for the completion 
of reconditioning. 

**It is quite true the ship will be in a state to 
make the voyage to the Tyne by the time you say," 
replied Herr M- , the Director who was show- 
ing the party round, **but it will take a number 
of days longer to put it in the same state it was 
when placed under embargo. It would be a short- 
sighted policy on our part to send a badly repaired 
ship out of our yards at the present time, for it 
would be certain to react seriously in the matter 
of future orders. You must bear in mind, sir, 
that we have a world-wide reputation for thor- 
oughness to maintain. '* 

He appeared far from reassured when he was 
told that the condition he sent the British ships 
home in would have no effect whatever upon his 
future business with the rest of the world ; more- 
over, he must have found that the longer he pon- 
dered that plain statement the less comfort there 
was to be extracted from it. It is astonishing how 
few Germans appear to realize that there are other 



Merchant Shipping 173 

things besides workmanship and quality — to say 
nothing of long credits, state subsidies and push- 
ful salesmen — that will profoundly affect the fu- 
ture of German trade. 

The inspection of the eight interned vessels at 
Bremerhaven brought out nothing of more than 
routine interest, but the visit to the great home 
port of the North German Lloyd on the Weser, 
just as had the one to that of the Hamburg- 
Amerika Line on the Elbe, offered an incompar- 
able opportunity to see at first hand the stagger- 
ing blow which the war had dealt to German ship- 
ping and — through shipping — to German foreign 
trade. Although the fact that I had been attached 
for the moment to the sub-commissions inspecting 
seaplane and Zeppelin stations prevented my vis- 
iting Hamburg and Bremerhaven with the Ship- 
ping Board, an illuminating glimpse of the latter 
was offered me during the passage of the Weser 
in the course of the journey to Nordholz. 

Although the day was overcast and there was 
some mistiness on the water, one could still see 
far enough up and down stream during the pas- 
sage to note the effects of the complete stagnation 
which had settled from the outbreak of the war 
upon this second of Germany's great maritime 
ports. The name Bkemerhaven had appeared in 
raised gilt letters across the stern of every one 



174 To Kiel in the *^ Hercules" 

of the hundreds of North German Lloyd steamers, 
and from New York to Shanghai, from Sydney to 
Durban, one was confronted with it in most of the 
ports of the world, but especially those of the Far 
East and Australia. I had seen it on the black- 
hulled, buif -funnelled freighters that were carry- 
ing Dutch goods from Ternate to Batavia, Chinese 
goods from Tientsin to Foochow, Japanese goods 
from Kobe to Nagasaki, British goods between 
Sandakan and Singapore. The ** Crossed Keys" 
house-flag was known throughout the East as the 
symbol of that notorious German trade policy of 
heavy rate-cutting until competition had been 
killed and then a forcing up of tariffs to just un- 
der a figure which would be calculated to revive 
competition. But while the Germans had plotted 
thus ruthlessly to strangle foreign competition, 
between their own lines nothing of the kind was 
ever allowed to go on. The Hamburg-Amerika 
and the Norddeutscher-Lloyd, with three or four 
other German lines of secondary importance, had 
divided up the world into ** spheres" of trade, 
with no line encroaching upon that of another ex- 
cept for certain inevitable ** over-lapping'' in pas- 
senger traffic on the Mediterranean and North 
Atlantic routes. 

The lines of the Norddeutscher-Lloyd were 
stretched like the tentacles of an octopus over the 



Merchant Shipping 175 

Indian Ocean and the Eastern Pacific, and at the 
outbreak of the war it was sucking trade from 
every British, French, Dutch, and Scandinavian 
line that plied to the ports of Australia, Malaysia, 
Chiaa, and the Philippines upon which it had 
fastened its slimy grip. The ^^N.D.L." was more 
than a German steamship line; it was Germany 
itself — Germany beginning to rivet down the edges 
of its ' * places in the sun. ' ' It was Herr Heiniken, 
the president of this great instrument of 
* * Deutschland Ueber AUes,'' who, in Hongkong in 
1911, exclaimed to a diplomat with whom he was 
discussing the Kaiser's Agadir bluff: ^^War! 
that, sir, is the one thing I want to avoid. What 
do we want to spend money and men on war when 
— within ten years at our present rate of progress 
— ^we can win everything that the most successful 
war could possibly give us? War might be a 
short cut to German world-power; and again, it 
might not. But hegemony by the trade route — 
provided only we continue to enjoy the freedom 
we have today — is sure. Our ships and merchants 
have already won half the battle, and victory is in 
sight if they are only allowed to go on. ' ' 

Herr Heiniken was a hard-headed, clear-seeing 
man, and one shudders to think how much truth 
there was in the words quoted. But the slower, 
more round-about *^ trade route" to world-power 



176 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

did not suit the hot-headed Junkers, and they 
forced their country to attempt to reach by the 
short-cut of war what was almost within the reach 
of their merchants and shippers. And that day 
at Bremerhaven we saw one of the results. 
There, sluddered down into the slime from which 
he rose, his tentacles all either severed or drawn 
in, was the remains of the *^N.D.L.'* octopus. 
Miles and miles of what were once black- and-buff 
freighters and liners were lying so deep in harbour 
silt that it would have taken a dredger to get 
them out of their slips. The tangles of sagging, 
weed-fringed mooring cables running over and 
about them — for all the world as though they 
had been meshed in the web of a Gargantuan 
spider — accentuated the helpless immobility of 
craft that had once flaunted the arrogant red, 
white, and black bunting of the German merchant 
marine in the uttermost corners of the Seven Seas. 
That river full of rotting ships was more than 
quiet — it was dead. The anchorage of the in- 
terned High Sea Fleet, off the inner entrance to 
Gutter Sound in Scapa Flow, was the first ceme- 
tery I had seen of the ships of the power whose 
ruler had proclaimed that its future was upon 
the sea. Bremerhaven was another graveyard of 
that ambient ambition. And the rusting hulks of 
the remains of the **N.D.L.'' fleet was not all that 



Merchant Shipping 177 

was buried in the port of opulent Bremen. The 
ships were only the tombstones. Deep in the 
mud beneath their keels was sunk the crumpled 
framework of a plan which was a long way far- 
ther on the way to consummation than most of 
Americans and Britons will ever realize — Ger- 
many's scheme to attain world domination by 
trade. Germany will, in time undoubtedly have 
another merchant marine, and she may even be- 
gin striving before long toward world domina- 
tion by any means, fair or foul, that otf ers a chance 
of success. But there is a slight probability that 
she will ever again hit upon any road that will take 
her so far toward the goal of ^'DeutscMand Ueber 
Alles^' as did the ^^ trade route,'' the way to which 
is now all but closed. There was the dankness of 
mould in the wind that blew across the graveyard 
of the high ambitions that lie buried beyond hope 
of resurrection in the mud beneath the weed-foul 
bottoms of the ships of Bremerhaven. 

The whole atmosphere of the stagnant water- 
front was brooding and gloomy, and as we drew 
near to the landing I was conscious of a pro- 
nounced depression, for no man who loves the sea 
can remain unmoved at the sight of neglected 
ships. To this mood the cheery chatter of a 
young American Ensign, who had just sauntered 
out on deck after warming his toes at the char- 



178 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

coal brazier in the tug's cabin, came as a welcome 
diversion. 

** There's a lot of funny things chalked up on 
the walls around the docks, ' ' he said, running his 
eyes over the signs along the front, *^but the one 
word that is written over the whole darn layout 
is ^Ichabod.' *N.D.L.' is the only other to run 
* one-two-three ' with it. By the look of things I 
take it that stands for *No D m Luck.' " 



VII 

THE BOMBING OF TONDERIST 

The German airship station at Tondern was by no 
means the largest of the enemy naval stations, 
but its position gave it an importance not meas- 
ured by the number of its sheds or its airships. 

Situated in Schleswig, not far from the Danish 
border, its ships were available equally for recon- 
naissance in the North Sea or the Baltic, including 
the Kattegat, and all the devious straits and 
passages between Denmark and the Scandinavian 
Peninsula. In a way, with the seaplane station at 
Sylt, it formed the first line of defence against 
the ever increasing British mine-laying sorties in 
the North Sea and Kattegat. The actual attacks 
against these mine-layers came to be left more and 
more to the seaplanes, though, in the first years 
of the war, considerable bomb-dropping was at- 
tempted here from Zeppelins. The vulnerability 
of the airship to aeroplane attack — and, notably, 
the destruction of a Zeppelin by a plane launched 
from the light cruiser Yarmouth — put an end to 
their work in this role, and compelled them to 
confine their activities entirely to reconnaissance. 

179 



180 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

It was the great effectiveness of the long observa- 
tion flights from Tondern which determined the 
E.N.A.S. to make a strong endeavour to put an 
end to the menace by destroying the sheds. Be- 
sides greatly hampering the British mine-laying 
program they were also credited with supplying 
the Germans with invaluable information for both 
their surface raids and submarine attacks on the 
Norwegian convoys. 

The only way in which Tondern could be reached 
was by machines launched from a carrier ship, 
and for this purpose the Furious, on account of her 
great speed and size, was perhaps better adapted 
than even a ship of the type of the Argus, in spite 
of the fact that the latter was specially built for 
the work, while the former was converted from a 
cruiser of the Courageous class. The raid, as 
any attempt of the kind must be, was prepared for 
some time in advance, and was only launched 
when it appeared that all conditions were espe- 
cially favourable for its success. Probably the 
astonishing Admiralty intelligence service played 
an important, perhaps a decisive, part. 

There was one point which favoured a raid 
upon Tondern as compared with an air attack 
upon one of the stations farther south. This was 
its proximity to the Danish border, which offered 
an alternative way of escape if return to the vicin- 



The Bombing of Tondern 181 

ity of the carrier ship should be impracticable. 
This was fully reckoned with in planning the raid, 
for it was well understood that the presence of 
numerous chaser squadrons from the German 
coastal seaplane stations might effectually bar 
the way back to the Furious or her escorting de- 
stroyers. Of the raid from the British stand- 
point I can tell little or no more than was revealed 
in the bulletin issued by the Admiralty a few days 
after it took place. This said, in effect, that a 
number of aeroplanes, launched from a carrier 
ship, had carried out a raid upon the Zeppelin 
sheds at Tondern shortly after daylight; that, in 
spite of the vigorous anti-aircraft fire encountered, 
hits had been observed upon at least two of the 
sheds, and that it was believed that any airships 
they contained must have been destroyed; and 
that some of the pilots had been picked up at 
sea, while others had landed safely in Denmark. 
Two or three were still unaccounted for, and 
might have either been lost in the sea. or been 
taken prisoner by the enemy. This number was 
subsequently reduced to one, and he, it was reck- 
oned, must have sunk with his machine in the sea. 
This was all the public were told of what was 
undoubtedly the most successful raid of its kind 
ever carried out, except for the usual more or less 
conflicting versions from Denmark and Holland. 



182 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

No one seemed to know for certain whether any 
Zeppelins had been destroyed or not, and if the 
Admiralty Intelligence Department knew, it kept 
its knowledge to itself. The fact that the British 
mine-laying squadrons had,, from that time on, 
less to report of Zeppelin activity in the Skager 
Eak was encouraging, however, and seemed to 
show that the Zeppelins were being kept out of 
harm's way. 

Under the armistice agreement the Allied Kaval 
Commission had the right of visiting any of the 
German naval air stations. This gave them an 
opportunity to see at first hand what damage had 
been inflicted in the Tondern raid. So one of the 
sub-commissions put this station upon their 
itinerary. One officer in particular — he had di- 
rected the raiding operations from the Furious — 
was especially anxious to go. But luck was 
against him, for the destroyer in which he was 
visiting the Borkum and Heligoland stations was 
delayed by fog, and he was too late to go with 
the Tondern party. 

The efforts made by the Germans, first, to pre- 
vent this Tondern visit being scheduled at all, and, 
after it was decided upon, so to delay it that the 
party making it should only arrive after dark and 
thus have limited opportunities for observation, 
were a revelation of Hun psychology. *'The 




oi 
o 

S 

< 

w 



t-H 

< 
o 

H 



O 
O 

o 

O 

H 

o 



The Bombing of Tondern 183 

Hun,'' said an officer of one of the air-station 
parties on his return to the Hercules one eve- 
ning, ^*is one of the most truthful individuals in 
the world — just as long as he knows you are in 
a position to find out the truth anyway. But if 
he thinks he can prevent your finding out the 
truth by lying, there seems to be no limit to the 
lengths he will go." Then he went on to tell of 
how an unusually affable and courteous young 
German flying officer, who had conducted his party 
to Norderney two days previously, had taken 
every occasion to point out how much trouble, and 
how profitless and uninteresting a visit to Ton- 
dern would be. He said that the station was a 
long distance out of the way, that reaching it 
would involve trips of some hours by both train 
and destroyer, that it was not in a region under 
the control of the Wilhelmshaven authorities, and 
that there was nothing to see anyway, as the sheds 
had been dismantled before they were bombed, 
and that there were no airships in them at the 
time they were destroyed. Pressed on the latter 
point, he had reiterated the statement, adding that 
the raid, though it was well planned and executed, 
had been a great waste of effort. **It will take 
much time, and you will see nothing, nothing at all, 
I assure you." 

* ' When I told him, ' ' continued the British officer, 



184 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

**that we would go ahead with the visit for sen- 
timental reasons, if for no others, he seemed a 
good deal upset, and this morning he did not 
turn up at all. The commander who came in 
his stead told me quite frankly that there were 
two Zeppelins destroyed at Tondern, and that 
he was to go in person with the party to see, as 
he put it, that it was 'properly received.' He 
had such an *open-and-above-board' manner about 
everything that I'm inclined to think there's some 
'catch' in his plan. It's probably on the score of 
time, or connections, or something of that kind. 
He says that, between destroyer, launch, and 
train, it is an eight-hour journey; but I have 
made up a schedule that will give us a good two 
hours of daylight there if there is no slip up on 
the Huns' end of the arrangements. We push 
off in the Viceroy at seven in the morning, and 
ought to be at Tondern by three. When we re- 
join her again at Brunsblittel's another matter." 
Just where the ''slip up" was meant to come 
became evident the next morning, when the Ger- 
man pilot was half an hour late in coming off to 
the Viceroy. As the sixty-mile run to Brunsbuttel 
was to have been covered at a rate of but fifteen 
miles an hour, a destroyer capable of doing close 
to thirty-five had no difficulty in making up the 
lost time, though once she was all but compelled 



The Bombing of Tondern 185 

to anchor on account of fog, which closed down 
just before the outer Elbe lightship was picked 
up. The railway station, close beside the gates of 
the Kiel Canal, was in plain view from the deck 
of the Viceroy, but the delay in sending off the 
promised tug to take us to the landing, with a fur- 
ther delay in the starting of the waiting special, set 
back our departure from Brunsbiittel an hour be- 
hind the time scheduled. 

As all the trains previously put at the disposal 
of the Allied Commission had been given the right 
of way over everything else on the line, we had 
good reason to believe that this time might also 
be made up in the course of the run across ab- 
solutely level country which separated us from 
Tondern. It was little more than one hundred 
miles. When, far from making up time, we con- 
tinued to lose it — both by waits at stations and by 
slow running between them — our mounting sus- 
picions that the Germans meant to keep us hang- 
ing about till after dark seemed to be confirmed. 
A protest to the Korvettenkapitan conducting the 
party brought only a shrug of the shoulders and 
the assertion that the bad conditions of the track 
and the engine made greater speed too dangerous. 
As there was no doubt that the engine was clanking 
and banging a good deal, and that the bogey im- 
mediately under our compartment had at least 



186 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

one **j9at'' wheel, about the only reply we could 
make to this was to point out that the twelve-car 
train which had just passed us was doing at least 
twice our speed. 

^*Ah! but that train had the good engine," 
was the naive reply. It hardly seemed worth 
while asking why our special had not also been 
provided with a **good" engine. Some sort of 
directions were given to the engineer, however, 
and there was sufficient acceleration of speed (at 
the expense, it appeared, of cutting oif the steam 
heating the car) to bring us into Tondern station 
with something like three-quarters of an hour of 
daylight still to the good. This was so contrary 
to the plans of our hosts that the train was kept 
waiting in the station for fifteen minutes on the 
pretext that the party of officers from the town 
who were to accompany us had not yet arrived. 
The crowd on the platform, amongst which Danish 
types predominated, seemed to be genuinely 
friendly, but a couple of Eed Cross girls who 
stepped forward to offer refreshments were waved 
savagely back by an armed guard. 

The ragged silhouettes of the bombed sheds 
were in plain sight, but a mile or so distant, when 
(the German officers having arrived and taken 
their places in a spare compartment) the train, 
with much wheezing and clanking, started up again 



The Bombing of Tondern 187 

and ran slowly out on to the spur towards the 
airship station. It would be but a few minutes 
more, we told ourselves, and there would still be 
light enough to see the general lay of things. 
The engine never increased its snaiPs-pace of 
three miles an hour all the way, and when it 
came to a stop at last,, close beside a towering 
wall of steel, there was barely light enough to 
show the top of the wall against the dusky, low- 
hanging clouds of the early twilight. Our con- 
ductor had maintained his schedule to the minute. 
When we alighted he was voluble in his explana- 
tion of how the track of the spur was in such a 
state of disrepair that a greater speed would 
have been attended by the risk of derailment. 
There was nothing that we could say to refute this 
specious protestation, until, on our return journey 
an hour or two later, the engine (which had been 
making steam in the interim) whisked the two 
cars over that same spur at the giddy rate of 
twenty miles an hour — a good six times as fast 
as we had come. 

The commander of the station, saying that, as 
the hour was late, we doubtless would desire to 
get the inspection over as quickly as possible, 
started off into the darkness at a brisk pace, the 
rest — British, Americans, and Germans — stum- 
bliQg along in pursuit as best they could. Enter- 



188 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

ing the shed by a side door near which the train 
had stopped, we found it so poorly lighted that 
the opposite wall showed but dimly, while the 
ends and the soaring arches of the roof were lost 
in dusky obscurity. At that first glimpse — prob- 
ably the fresh smell of the cement under foot and 
the palpable newness of the pressed asbestos sid- 
ing under one of the lights had something to do 
with it — the shed gave one the impression of be- 
ing just on the point of completion. The descrip- 
tion of the station furnished to us mentioned no 
such structure, so that we were rather at a loss. 
No explanation was volunteered, however, and 
our guide pushed on straight across, with the evi- 
dent intention of passing out through the op- 
posite door. But the senior Allied officer, an 
American, of commander's rank, stopped him with 
a request for more hght. Half a dozen switches 
were then thrown over, and flooded the great struc- 
ture with the brilliant radiance of countless in- 
candescent globes. At once the huge building 
was revealed as a double Zeppelin shed of the 
largest size, just at the end of a long spell of 
restoration after being badly damaged. Frag- 
ments of dur aluminum and charred pieces of wood 
and fabric, swept together in great heaps at the 
sides, told more of the story, and great fresh 
patches at several points in the roof the rest of 



The Bombing of Tondern 189 

it. This was the shed in which the two Zeppelins, 
which the Germans admitted losing when the sta- 
tion was bombed by the planes from the Furious, 
had been destroyed. It was the least damaged 
of the sheds bombed, said the German com- 
mander, and it had been rebuilt with materials 
from two other sheds both of which were in proc- 
ess of demolition. 

I saw the Yankee officer's eyes glistening as the 
picture those words conjured up flashed before 
them, and heard his muttered ^^Some raid that, by 
cripes!'' 

*^If you are zatisfied, ve vill now go on to der 
oder sheds," the German commander said pres- 
ently, and we followed him out into the deepening 
twilight. 

Tondern had nothing of the regularity of plan 
of Nordholz, nor, luckily, the latter 's magnificent 
distances. We found the two remaining sheds, or 
what was left of them, at less than half a mile from 
the first. One was nothing but a foundation, with 
prostrate steel pillars and girders scattered about 
over it, and numerous deep pools of water. I 
say deep, because it took two of his colleagues to 
fish out one of the party who stumbled into it, 
and he, by the irony of fate, was a stout German 
officer, with a deep bass voice and a magnificent 
vocabulary. We had to take the German's word 



190 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

for it tliat this shed had been a small one, which 
they were demolishing because it had been obso- 
lete, and not because it had been damaged by 
bombs. 

Men were at work pulling down a section of the 
next shed as we came up, but they shambled away 
at a word from one of their officers. This one, 
said the station commander, was much the worst 
damaged of the two bombed in the raid, but, by 
good luck, there had been no airships in it at 
the time. The reason that it was more badly 
knocked to pieces than the other,, in spite of the 
fact that, in the latter, the explosion of the Zep- 
pelins was added to that of the bombs, was due 
to its doors having been tightly closed. This had 
caused the full force of the exploding bombs 
to be exerted against the walls and roof of the 
shed, whereas, in the first one, much of that force 
had been dissipated through the open front of the 
structure. 

Save a flare or two by which the men had been 
working, there was no lights in this shed, but, 
picking our way over heaps of broken glass and 
asbestos sheeting, we managed to find a point 
from which the tangled and twisted girders of a 
still undemolished section of the roof were sil- 
houetted against a stratum of western clouds, yet 
bright in the last of the sunset glow. For the 



The Bombing of Tondern 191 

most part they bulged outward, where the up- 
gush of the explosion had exerted its force against 
the roof, but in two places they bent sharply in- 
ward, and ended in jagged bars of torn metal. 
These were the places, the Germans told us, where 
two of the bombs burst through. One of them 
explained the remarkable fact of the great holes 
being almost exactly in a line down the middle 
of the roof by saying: ^^Poof ! they fly so low 
they could not miss. Any airman could do that. 
But they did miss with one bomb, though, '* he 
said, brightening. *^Come mit me. I show you," 
and he led the way to a spot forty or fifty feet 
in front of the wrecked building, where his elec- 
tric torch revealed a round hole in the earth 
about five feet in diameter by four feet deep. **I 
think that bomb miss der top of der shed by one 
half -metre, ' ' he said, sighting along his out- 
stretched arm at what was evidently reckoned the 
angle of a bomb from a low-flying machine. 
**Yes, it miss der shed by half a metre; but it 
kills five men chust der same. Not so bad after 
all, perhapds.'^ Your Hun officer is ever a cold- 
blooded reckoner, and one of the reasons he is so 
useful is that he never lets sentiment blur his 
perspective. 

From various things heard and seen in the 
course of that hurried night visit of inspection 



192 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

to Tondern it would have been possible to piece 
out a fairly accurate picture of how the great 
raid must have appeared to the Germans stationed 
there at the time. It will be better, however, to 
set down a brief resume of the connected account 
I heard at Nordholz from Von Butlar, Germany's 
most famous surviving airship pilot, who had, as 
will be seen, good reason for remembering what 
occurred on that eventful morning. 

Von Butlar 's ^ chief claim to distinction is his 
notable long-distance flights, the most remark- 
able of which was in connection with an attempt 
to carry medical supplies to General Von Letow 
in German East Africa. The German European 
forces there were being decimated by malaria at 
the time, and Von Letow had sent word by wire- 
less that unless a supply of quinine reached him 
by a certain date he would be unable to carry on. 
As this campaign was diverting far too much Brit- 
ish effort for the Germans to let it come to an end 

1 Since returning to England I have received information 
which, while confirming the fact that he commanded "L-59" when 
it was commissioned, makes it probable that Von Butlar was 
transferred to another Zeppelin before the East African flight 
was attempted. A pilot by the name of Bugholz is believed to 
have been in command on that occasion. Although Von Butlar's 
representation of himself as the hero of the remarkable African 
flight appears to have been a case of pure "swank," there is every 
reason to believe that his account of the Tondern raid is sub- 
stantially correct. — L. E. F. 






bird's-eye view of KIEL 




IN KIEL DOCKYARD 



The Bombing of Tondern 193 

while any card still remained to be played, it was 
decided to make an attempt to send relief by Zep- 
pelin. A rendezvous was arranged,, and after 
some delay an airship, under Von Butlar^s com- 
mand, was dispatched from a station in Bulgaria, 
the nearest practicable point from which a start 
could be made. The delay alone caused the fail- 
ure of the boldly conceived project, for, flying 
without a hitch of any kind. Von Butlar had al- 
ready crossed the Mediterranean, Lower and Up- 
per Egypt, and was well over the Sudan when 
Von Letow informed him by wireless that the 
British had occupied the point where he was to 
have landed, and that, as it was not practicable 
to rendezvous with him in a sufficiently open region 
elsewhere, it would be best for him to return 
home. This remarkable feat was successfully ac- 
complished. Von Butlar bringing his airship safely 
to earth at a point on the Turkish shores of the 
Black Sea. 

A scarcely less remarkable flight was one in 
which Von Butlar claimed to have crossed the 
North Sea to near the Yorkshire coast, to have 
passed north in sight of Eosyth, Invergordon, 
and Scapa Flow, to have flown across to Norway, 
gaining useful information respecting convoy and 
patrol movements, and back to his home station at 
Tondern or Nordholz. The Admiralty, which had 



194 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

some information about this latter flight, had 
credited Von Butlar with having been in the air 
104 hours, but he assured several members of 
the Commission that the actual time was little 
short of six days. He also claimed to have taken 
a useful photograph of the Grand Fleet at anchor 
at Scapa Flow. 

At the time of the Tondern raid, Von Butlar was 
flying from there, one of the two Zeppelins de- 
stroyed being that which he commanded. As he 
speaks little, if any, English, the following ac- 
count is a free translation of the story he related 
to us in German of what occurred on that occa- 
sion. **We always recognized, ' ' he said, *^from 
the time that we learned that the British were de- 
veloping swift flying-machine carriers, that Ton- 
dern was especially vulnerable to an attack of this 
kind, and we prepared against it as best we could. 
We had expected, however, that it would come in 
the form of a raid by seaplanes, which would, of 
course, have been comparatively heavy and slow,, 
and which would have had to return to the sea 
to land, and against these our defence would prob- 
ably have been effective. Where we deceived our- 
selves was in underrating the risks that your 
men were willing to take, such as, for instance, 
that of landing in the sea in an ordinary aeroplane 



The Bombing of Tondern 195 

on the chance of being picked up in the compara- 
tively short time such a machine will float.'' 

**We were not prepared for such a raid at any 
time, but especially at the moment at which it 
occurred. We had had a protecting flight of light 
fighting aeroplanes at Tondern, but the landing 
ground had never been properly levelled. There 
had been many accidents, and a number of the 
machines were always disabled. This trouble be- 
came so bad toward the middle of last summer that 
it was finally decided to withdraw the protecting 
flight, which was badly needed at the moment else- 
where, until the landing ground had been im- 
proved. As usual, your Admiralty seem to have 
learned of this within a few hours and to have 
decided to take advantage of it at once. From the 
way your machines were flying when they ap- 
peared, I am practically certain that they felt 
sure of being opposed by nothing worse than gun- 
fire. 

**We received warning, of course, when the 
raiding planes were still over the sea, but, unless 
some of the machines at once sent up from the 
coastal stations could stop them, there was noth- 
ing for us to do but to give them the warmest 
reception we could with the anti-aircraft guns, 
in which we were fairly strong. Our gunners 



196 To Kiel in the *^ Hercules" 

were well trained, and if your planes liad kept 
high, as they would have done if they had been 
expecting a strong attack by a superior force of 
protecting machines, they would most probably 
have been prevented from doing much harm, in- 
stead of just about wiping the station off the map, 
as they did. 

**When we had the warning, most of those 
without special duties went to the ahri, which had 
been provided at all stations for use in case of 
raids. But I was so concerned over the danger to 
my own ship that I remained outside. It was 
quite light by the time they appeared. At first 
they were flying high, but while they were still 
small specks I saw them begin to plane down, as 
though following a pre-arranged plan. It was all 
over in a minute or two after that. Part of them 
headed for one shed and part for the other. Div- 
ing with their engines all out — or so it seemed 
— they came over with the combined speed from 
their drop and the pull of their propellers. Down 
they came, till they seemed to be going to ram 
the sheds. Then, one after another, they flat- 
tened out and passed lengthwise over their targets 
at a height of about forty metres, kicking loose 
bombs as they went. 

^*Our guns simply had no chance at all with 
them. In fact, one of the guns came pretty near 



The Bombing of Tondern 197 

to getting knocked out itself. It was so reckless a 
piece of work that I couldn't help noticing it, even 
while my own airship was beginning to burst into 
flames. One of the pilots, it seems, must have 
found that he had a bomb or two left at about 
the same time he spotted the position of one of 
the guns that was firing at him. Banking steeply, 
round he came, dived straight at the battery, let- 
ting go a bomb as his sight came on when he was 
no more than fifteen metres above it. Then he 
waved his hand and dashed off after the other ma- 
chines, which were already scattering to avoid the 
German planes beginning to converge on them 
from all directions. It was one of the finest ex- 
amples of nerve I ever saw. 

**The precaution we had taken of opening the 
doors of the main shed saved it from total de- 
struction, for the airships, instead of exploding, 
only burned comparatively slowly; but Tondern, 
as an air station, had practically ceased to exist 
from that moment." 



VIII 

THKOUGH THE CAITAL. TO THE BALTIC 

The Hercules and her four escorting destroyers 
(the latter having been scattered during the last 
few days to various ports and air stations in con- 
nection with the inspection being pushed all along 
the German North Sea coast) were to have 
rendezvoused at Brunsbiittel by dark of the 10th, 
in order to be ready to start through the Kiel 
Canal at daybreak the following morning. At 
the appointed time, however, only the Viceroy, 
which had pushed through that morning with the 
**air*' party en route to the Zeppelin station at 
Tondem, was on hand. The Hercules^ which had 
got under weigh from Wilhelmshaven during the 
forenoon,, reported that she had been compelled 
to anchor off the Elbe estuary on account of the 
thickness of the fog, and the Verdun, coming on 
from her visit to Borkum and Heligoland, had 
been delayed from a similar cause. The Vidette 
and Venetia, which were helping the ** shipping" 
and ^* warship" parties get around the harbours of 
Bremen and Hamburg, signalled that their work 

198 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 199 

was still uncompleted and that they would have 
to proceed later to Kiel **on their own.'' 

Returning to Brunsbuttel from the Tondern 
visit well along toward midnight, the absence of 
the Hercules compelled the four of us who had 
made that arduous journey in the Viceroy (the 
accommodations in the '*V's" appear to be as 
elastic as the good nature of their officers is bound- 
less), to spend the night aboard, and the impossi- 
bility of rejoining our own ships in the morning 
was responsible for the fact that we continued 
with her^ — the first British destroyer to pass 
through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal — on to Kiel. 
It was a passage as memorable as historic. 

An improving visibility toward morning en- 
abled the Hercules to get under weigh again be- 
fore daybreak, and in the first grey light of the 
winter dawn she came nosing past us and on up 
to the entrance of the canal. At each end of the 
latter there are two locks — lying side by side — 
for both * ' outgoing ' ' and ' ^ incoming ' ' ships. The 
right-side one of the * incoming" pair was re- 
served for the Hercules, while the other was kept 
clear for the Regenshurg — flying Admiral Goette's 
flag — and the two British destroyers. The differ- 
ence in level between the canal and the waters of 
the Elbe, varying considerably with the tide, is 
only a few feet at most, and the locking through, 



200 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

as a consequence, only the matter of minutes. 

The Hercules and Regenshurg were already in 
their respective locks as the Viceroy, with the 
Verdun half a cable's length astern, came gliding 
up out of the fog, the former already beginning 
to show her great bulk above the side as she lifted 
with the in-pouring water. The attention of the 
score or so of Germans standing on the wall be- 
tween the locks was centred, not on the Hercules, 
as one might have expected, but on the Regens- 
hurg, the most of them being gathered in a ges- 
ticulative group abreast the latter 's bow. The 
reason for this we saw presently. 

The handling of the British destroyers on this 
occasion was one of the smartest things of the 
kind I ever saw. Indeed, under the circum- 
stances, * ^spectacular ' ' is a fitter word to describe 
it than *' smart.'' Without reducing the speed 
of her engines by a revolution, the Viceroy con- 
tinued right on into the narrow water-lane of the 
lock at the same pace as she had approached its 
entrance. Certainly she was doing ten knots, 
and probably a good bit over that. On into the 
still more restricted space between the Regenshurg 
and the right side of the dock she drove, while 
the waterside loafers — ^^scenting a smash — grinned 
broadly in anticipation of the humiliation of the 
Englanders. Straight at the loftily looming lock 





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Through the Canal to the Baltic 201 

gate she drove, and I remember distinctly seeing 
men who were crossing the canal on the bridge 
made by the folded flaps break into' a run to 
avoid the imminent crash. And she never did 
slow down; she stopped. While there was still 
a score of yards to go the captain threw the 
engine-room telegraph over to *'Stop!'' and 
^* Half-Speed Astern!^' and, straining like a dog 
in leash as the reversed propellers killed her head- 
way, stop she did. The superlative finesse of the 
thing (for they had seen something before of the 
handling of ships in narrow places) fairly swept 
the gathering dock-side vultures otf their feet with 
astonishment, and one little knot of sailors all 
but broke into a cheer. Then the Verdun came 
dashing up and repeated the same spectacular 
manoeuvre in our wake ; only, instead of bringing 
up a few feet short of the lock gates, it was the 
stern of the Viceroy , with its festoon of poised 
depth-charges, that her axe-like bow backed away 
from after nosing up close enough to sniff, if not to 
scratch, the paint. 

** You Ve impressed the Huns right enough, sir,'' 
I remarked to the captain as he rang down, * * Fin- 
ished with the Engines," and turned to descend 
the ladder of the bridge; **but wasn't it just a 
bit—" 

**Yes, it was rather slow," he cut in apologetic- 



202 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

ally in answer to what he thought I was going to 
say; **but I didn't dare to take any chances of 
coming a cropper in strange waters. Now, if it 
had been the *Pen' at Rosyth, we might have 
shown them what one of the little old *V's' can 
do when it comes to a pinch.'' 

At the time I thought he was joking — that I had 
seen the extreme limit that morning of the * ^ handi- 
ness" of the modern destroyer. But the Viceroy, 
astonishing as that performance had been, still 
had something up her sleeve. A week later, in 
the fog-shrouded entrance to Kiel Fiord, where a 
slip would have been a good deal more serious 
matter than the telescoping of a bow on a lock 
gate, I saw how much. 

From the vantage of the bridge I saw, just be- 
fore descending for breakfast, what it had been 
that had deflected the attention of the lock-side 
loafers from the Hercules to the Regenshurg, 
That most graceful of light cruisers had paid 
the penalty of being left with a most disgraceful 
crew. She had rammed the lock gate full and 
square, and — from the look of her bows — while 
she still had a good deal of way on. We had 
remarked especially the trim lissomeness of those 
bows when she met us off the Jade on the day the 
Hercules arrived in German waters. And now 
the sharp stem was bent several feet to port, 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 203 

while all back along her ** flare'' the buckled plat- 
ing heaved in undulant corrugations like the hide 
on the neck of an old bull rhino. As it was the 
kind of repair that would take a month or more 
in dock to effect, there was nothing for the Ger- 
mans to do but go on using her as she was. Luck- 
ily, she did not appear to be making much water. 
She followed us through the canal without diffi- 
culty, and — as the days when she would be called 
on to shake out her thirty knots were gone for 
ever— it is probable that she served Admiral 
Groette as well for a flagship as any other of her 
undamaged sisters would have. But they were 
never able to smooth out her *^brow of care" dur- 
ing all our stay in German waters ; indeed, I shall 
be greatly surprised if (to use the expressive term 
I heard a bluejacket in the Viceroy apply to it that 
morning) she does not come poking that ** cauli- 
flower nose" in front of her when she is finally 
handed over for internment at Scapa. 

Although they would be dwarfed beside such 
great structures as the Pedro Miguel or Gatun 
locks of the Panama Canal, the locks at Bruns- 
biittel are fine solid works, displaying on every 
hand evidences of the great attention which had 
been given to providing for their rapid opera- 
tion under pressure, as when the High Sea Fleet 
was being rushed through from the Baltic to the 



204 To Kiel in the '* Hercules" 

North Sea. Having been enlarged primarily to 
** double the strength of the German Fleet," ex- 
pense had not mattered in the way it would have 
had the canal been expected to justify itself com- 
mercially. The merchant traffic of the waterway 
for many years to come would not have de- 
manded the double locks at either end; but naval 
exigencies called for speedy operation at any 
cost, and they were built. 

Everything about the locks was in extremely 
good repair. Even the great agate and onyx 
mosaic of the name Kaiser Wilhelm Kanal, set 
between the double-headed eagles of the Imperial 
arms, was swept and polished to display it to 
best advantage. The locks were only the front 
window display, however, for the badly eroded 
banks of the canal itself testified to the same lack 
of maintenance as the railways were suffering 
from. As our pilot reported that the revolution- 
ists had spent the night obliterating all the Im- 
perial names — such as Kaiserstrasse and Kron- 
printzstrasse — in Brunsbuttel, one felt safe in as- 
suming that the gaudy mosaic on the lock wall 
had been furbished as a decoration, not as a sym- 
bol. 

The Hercules, having been raised to the proper 
level, was locked out into the canal, along which 
she proceeded at the steady six-knot speed laid 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 205 

down as the Hmit not to be exceeded by ships 
of her size. Although of considerably less dis- 
placement than a number of the largest of the 
German capital ships, she was of greater draught 
than any of these, and even the burning of several 
hundred tons of coal in the voyage from Eosyth 
still left her drawing slightly more than the thirty 
odd feet that the German naval command had 
set as the limit. This had been figured out in 
advance, however, and an oiling all round of the 
destroyers before leaving Wilhelmshaven had 
brought her up just the few inches necessary to 
making the passage without inflicting injury to 
herself or to the canal. 

The Hercules had traversed about a mile of the 
canal before the Viceroy was locked out to follow 
in her wake, and something like that interval was 
preserved throughout most of the passage. The 
Verdun kept about a quarter of a mile astern of 
the Viceroy, with the Regenshurg — but so far back 
as to be out of sight — bringing up the rear. Two 
squat patrol launches — one on either quarter, a 
couple of hundred yards astern — followed the 
Hercules all the way, but for just what purpose 
we could not make out. 

For the first few miles the country on either 
side of the canal was of the same low-lying nature 
as that through which all of our railway journeys 



206 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

from Wilhelmshavesi had heen made. Ditched 
and dyked marshland alternated with stretches of 
bog and broad sheets of stagnant water where 
the drainage system had proved unequal to carry- 
ing off the overflow in the inundations following 
the winter rains. Cultivation was at a standstill 
here, probably until the water-logged soil dried 
out in the spring. Like the East Frisian pen- 
insula, the region was essentially a grazing rather 
than an agricultural one, and the farmers were 
paying the penalty of having broken up grass- 
land that was only dry enough for cultivation 
during a few months of the year. Cattle were 
sca:rce, sheep scarcer, and such of the inhabitants 
as were visible around the dismal farmsteads had 
the dull, purposeless air of people with nothing 
to do and plenty of time to do it in. 

As we fared inland only the gradually heighten- 
ing banks told that the country was increasing in 
elevation. Ponds and bogs were still frequent, 
and it was not until the first low hills were reached 
that there appeared to be enough drainage for 
the land to shake itself free of water. Here the 
country took on a more cheerful aspect, due prin- 
cipally to the fact that the people, many of whom 
were working, seemed less *^ bogged down" — 
mentally and physically — than their countrymen 
in the water-logged areas near the sea. Most of 




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Through the Canal to the Baltic 207 

them were capable of recognizing us as Allied war- 
ships (something which few of the others appeared 
to have done), and when this had sunk home they 
usually hurried down to the bank of the canal for 
a closer view. Most of these isolated farming 
people were undemonstrative, and it was not un- 
til the more sophisticated inhabitants of the vil- 
lages and towns were encountered that women and 
children were seen to wave their hands and men 
to doff their hats and bow. Most of the popula- 
tion, both agricultural and industrial, is found 
toward the Kiel rather than the Brunsbiittel end 
of the canal. 

At one point we came upon two men and a girl 
feverishly engaged in skinning a horse, which 
appeared to have dropped dead in the furrow. 
Or rather, they had already skinned it and were 
busy cutting up the carcass. Watching through 
my glass from the bridge of the Viceroy^ I saw all 
three of them rush helter-skelter over a hill and 
out of sight as the Hercules came labreast of them, 
only to hurry back and resume their grisly work 
when she had disappeared around a bend just 
ahead. "When they again took to their heels on 
sighting the Viceroy, I asked the pilot what they 
were afraid of. The law required, he replied, 
that the authorities should be notified of the death 
of any head of live stock in order that the meat (in 



208 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

case it was deemed fit for human consumption) 
should be distributed through the regular ration- 
ing channels. These people, he thought, were in 
the act of stealing their own dead horse, and 
doubtless their guilty consciences made them fear 
they would be reported and delivered up to jus- 
tice. 

Since witnessing this incident I have found 
myself rather less inclined to dwell in retrospect 
on that huge, juicy ** beefsteak^' I had devoured 
with such gusto when it was the piece de resistance 
on the menu of our luncheon at the Nordholz Zep- 
pelin station a couple of days previously. 

Through the low country the construction of the 
canal had evidently been only a matter of dredg- 
ing, but the multiplication in size and number of 
the ** dumps'' as the elevation increased showed 
that there had been places where digging on an 
extensive scale had been necessary, especially in 
connection with the widening and deepening op- 
erations. The fact that most of the ** dumps" 
appeared to consist of earth of a very loose and 
sandy nature, some of them so much so that they 
had been planted thickly with young trees to pre- 
vent their being shifted by the winds, showed that 
the excavation problem had been a comparatively 
simple one, more of the nature of that at Suez 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 209 

than Panama, where so much of the way had to 
be blasted through solid rock. 

The looseness of the earth had made it necessary 
to cut the banks at as low an angle as forty-five 
degrees in places to prevent caving, and at these 
points the under-water part of the channel was 
faced with roughly cut stone to minimize erosion. 
As this work was only carried a few feet above 
the surface of the water, it required but slight 
speed on the part of a large ship to produce a 
wave high enough to splash over on to the un- 
protected earth and bring it down in slides. This 
had doubtless happened very often in the course of 
the frequent shuttling to and fro of the High Sea 
Fleet, for the stonework was heavily undermined 
in many places, with few signs to indicate that 
much had been done in the way of repairs. 

Except in the locks (and even there the con- 
crete was cracking badly in places, particularly at 
the Kiel end), the canal shows many evidences of 
the haste of its construction and the serious de- 
terioration it has suffered from heavy use and 
poor maintenance. It will require much money 
and labour to put it in proper condition, and 
neither of these is likely to be over plentiful in 
Germany for some years to come. 

Our first glimpse of Allied prisoners in their 



210 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

** natural habitat'^ occurred at a point about 
twenty miles inland from Brunsbiittel, where a 
new and very lofty railway viaduct was being 
thrown across the canal. The extensive groups of 
huts along the bank in the shadow of the half-com- 
pleted final span of steel looked, from the distance, 
like ordinary workmen's quarters. As we drew 
nearer, however, broad belts of barbed wire sur- 
rounding those on the right side suggested that 
they were used as a prison camp even before our 
glasses had revealed the motley clad group on 
the bank waving to the Hercules. As the Viceroy 
came abreast the excited and constantly augment- 
ing crowd, we saw that the uniforms were mostly 
French and Russian, though there were three or 
four men in the grey of Italy and at least one with 
the unmistakable cap of the Serbs. A hulking 
chap in khaki, whom I was making the object of 
an especially close scrutiny on the chance that he 
might be British or American, put an end to 
doubt by slapping his chest resoundingly and an- 
nouncing proudly, ^^Je suis Beige!'' From the 
fact that they were all in good spirits, we took it 
that they were getting enough to eat and that 
prospects for repatriation were favourable. 

We had quite given up hope of sighting any 
British when suddenly, from behind a barbed- 
wire barrier fencing off the last groups of huts, 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 211 

rang out a cry of ^* 'Ow's oP Blighty f Sweep- 
ing my glass round to the quarter from whence 
the query came, I focussed on a phiz which, de- 
spite its mask of lather, I should have recognized 
as Cockney just as surely in Korea or Katmandu 
as on the banks of the Kiel Canal. Waving his 
brush jauntily in response to the salvo of de- 
lighted howls boomed out by the bluejackets lin- 
ing the starboard rail, he turned back to the little 
pocket mirror on the side of the hut and resumed 
his interrupted shave. 

**Can you beat that, I ask you I" gasped an 
American Flying officer who had just clambered 
up to the bridge. ^^Here it is the first time that 
* Tommy' has seen his country's flag in anywhere 
from one to four years; and yet, even when he 
must know he could get a lift home for the asking, 
all he does is to — go on scraping his face! I 
say, can you beat it?" 

The captain did not reply, but his indulgent 
grin indicated a sympathetic understanding of 
*^ British repressiveness." 

But if this particular ** Tommy" had been some- 
what casual in his greeting, there was nothing to 
complain of on that score in the reception given 
us by the next British prisoners we encountered, 
a few miles further along. The incident — one of 
the most dramatic of the visit — occurred just after 



212 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

the Hercules had passed under the great railway 
viaduct which crosses the canal almost midway 
between Brunsbtittel and Kiel. Wherever prac- 
ticable, I might explain, all railways have been 
carried across the canal at a height sufficient to 
allow even the lofty topmasts of the German war- 
ships to pass under by a comfortable margin. 
Not one of the several viaducts runs much under 
two hundred feet above the canal, and to attain 
this height at an easy grade long approaches have 
been necessary. Some of these — partly steel 
trestle, partly embankment — stretched beyond 
eyescope to left and right; but at the viaduct 
in question the ascent was made by means of 
two great spiral loops at either end. 

A segment of the loop on the left ran close be- 
side the canal in the form of a steep embankment, 
and as the Hercules glided under the viaduct I 
saw (we had closed up to within a few hundred 
yards of her at the time) a long train of passenger 
cars, drawn by two puffing engines, just beginning 
the heavy climb. Suddenly I caught the flash of 
what I took to be a red flag being wildly waved 
from one of the car windows, and I was just start- 
ing to tell the captain that we were about to pass 
a trainload of revolutionaries when the gust of 
a mighty cheer swept along the waters to us and 
set the radio aerials ringing above my head. 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 213 

**Yoii can't tell me that's a ^Bolshie' yell," ob- 
served the American officer decisively. ** Nothing 
but Yanks or Tommies could cough up a roar like 
that, believe me." 

Then I saw that all the canal-ward sides of the 
dozen or more coaches were wriggling with khaki 
arms and shoulders (for all the world as though a 
great two-hundred-yard-long centipede had been 
pinned up there and left to squirm), and that what 
I had taken for the red flag of anarchy was only the 
mass effect of a number of fluttering bandannas. 
Again and again they cheered the Hercules and 
the White Ensign, with a fresh salvo for the Vice- 
roy, which they sighted just before the curve of 
the loop the train was ascending cut off their view 
of the canal. That was all we ever heard or saw 
of them. We were never even sure whether they 
were British or American. We felt certain, how- 
ever, that the fact that most of them were still 
in khaki indicated that their stay in the * ^ Land of 
Kultur" had not been a long one, and, moreover, 
that they were already on the first leg of their 
journey home. 

Prisoners working on the land — mostly Eus- 
sian — were more and more in evidence as we 
neared the Kiel end of the canal. The majority 
of them still wore their army uniforms, but other- 
wise there was little to differentiate them — a short 



214 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

distance away at least — from the native peasant 
labour. None of them appeared to be under 
guard, and in many places they were working side 
by side with German farm hands of both sexes. 
At a number of points I saw Eussians lounging 
indolently in groups consisting mostly of Ger- 
mans (several of which included women) that had 
gathered along the banks of the canal to watch us 
pass, and two or three times I observed unmis- 
takable Russian prisoners (or perhaps ex-prison- 
ers) walking arm-in-arm and apparently in ani- 
mated conversation with German girls. They 
seem quite to have taken root in the country. 
Indeed, the pilot of the Viceroy for the first half 
of the passage through the canal — he was a 
Schleswig man, strongly Danish in appearance 
and probably in sympathies — assured me that the 
Germans had had the greatest difficulty in getting 
Russian prisoners to leave the country at all, and 
that there had been frequent *' desertions" from 
trains and boats whenever it had been attempted. 
This may well have been true, though — with 
labour in Germany as much in demand as it was 
throughout the war — I doubt very much if a great 
deal in the way of repatriation of Russians had 
ever been attempted. 

With the towns and villages increasing in size 
and number as we came to the fertile rolling coun- 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 215 

try toward the Baltic end of the canal, evidences 
multiplied that the population expected our com- 
ing and that, directly or indirectly, they had been 
instructed to adopt a ** conciliatory'^ bearing. In 
the farming region toward the North Sea end their 
bearing had been more suggestive of indifference 
than anything else; but in the crowds that came 
down to line the railed *^ promenades" along the 
banks an ingratiating attitude was at once ap- 
parent. Some of these people, of course, were of 
Danish extraction and probably sincere, especially 
a number who waved their hands from well in- 
side their doorways, as though to avoid being 
observed by their neighbours; but for the most 
part it was the same nauseating exhibition we had 
already seen repeated so often at railway stations 
all over the North Sea littoral. 

The only individual we saw in the whole passage 
who thoroughly convinced me of his sincerity was 
a bloated ruffian who hailed us from the stern 
of the barge he had edged into a ferry slip to 
give us room to pass. **Go back to England, you 
English swine ! ' ' he roared to the accompaniment 
of a lewd gesture. We learned later that he gave 
both the Hercules and Verdun the same per- 
emptory orders. Yes, he was quite sincere, that 
old bargee, and for that reason I have always 
thought more kindly of him than of all the rest 



216 To Kiel in the ^^Hercules" 

of his grimacing brethren and sistem we saw 
along the canal that day. A spectacled student 
(though it is quite possible he was trying to put 
the same sentiment in politer language) was 
rather less convincing. * * English gentlemen, ' ' he 
cried, drawing his loose-jointed frame up to its 
full height and glaring at the bridge of the Viceroy 
from under his peaked cap, **why do you come 
hereT' That may have been intended for a pro- 
test, or, again, he may merely have been * * swank- 
ing'' his linguistic accomplishments. 

The bluejackets were splendid. There were 
places — notably at several industrial establish- 
ments where crowds of rather *^ on-coming" girls 
in trousers exerted their blonde witcheries to the 
full in endeavours to ** start something" — ^when 
the least sign of friendliness from the ship would 
have undoubtedly been met with loud acclaim. 
But not a British hand did I see lifted in response 
to the hundreds waved from the banks, while 
many a simpering grin died out as the moon-face 
behind it passed under the steady stare of the 
imperturbable matelots lining the rails of the 
steadily steaming warships. 

The length of the Kiel Canal is just under a 
hundred kilometres (about sixty miles), so that 
— at the speed of ten kilometres an hour to which 
we were limited — the passage required about ten 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 217 

hours, exclusive of the time spent in locking in 
and out. At it was an hour after dawn when we 
began the passage at Brunsbuttel, the short winter 
day was not long enough to make it possible to 
reach the other end in daylight. By five o'clock 
darkness had begun to settle over the waters, and 
the grey mists, piling ever thicker in the narrow 
notch between the hills, deepened through violet 
to purple before taking on the black opacity of 
the curtain of the night. Then the lights came 
on — parallel rows of incandescents narrowing to 
mist-softened wedges of blurred brightness ahead 
and astern — and we continued cleaving our easy 
effortless way through the ebony water. 

The blank squares of lighted villa windows 
heralded the approach to Kiel; then factories, 
black, still, and stagnant, with the tracery of over- 
head cranes and the bulk of tall chimneys showing 
dimly through the mists; then the locks. As the 
difference between the canal level and the almost 
tideless Baltic is only a matter of inches, lock- 
ing-out was even a more expeditious operation 
than locking in from the Elbe at the other end. 
There was just time to note that the ^^ Kaiser Wil- 
Jielm^' mosaic, there as at Brunsbuttel, had been 
scrubbed up bright and clean, when the gates 
ahead folded inward and the way into the Baltic 
was open. Half an hour later, after steaming 



218 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

slowly across a harbour past many moored war- 
ships, we were tying up alongside the Hercules, 
where she had come to anchor a mile off Kiel 
dockyard. 

The fog lifted during the night, and for an hour 
or two the following morning there were even 
signs that our long-lost friend, the sun, was 
struggling to show his face through the sinister 
shoals of cumulo-nimbus banked f rowningly across 
the south-eastern heavens. It was evident dirty 
weather was brewing, but for the moment Kiel and 
its harbour were revealed in all their loveliness. 
Completely land-locked from the open Baltic, the 
beautiful little fiord disclosed a different prospect 
in whichever direction one turned his eyes. The 
famous Kaiserliche Yacht Club was close at hand 
over the port quarter of the Hercules , with a villa- 
bordered strand opening away to the right. The 
airy filagree of lofty cranes revealed the location 
of what had been Europe's greatest naval dock- 
yard, while masses of red roofs disclosed the 
heart of Kiel itself. Heavily wooded hills, still 
green, rippled along the skyline on the opposite 
side of the fiord, with snug little bays running 
back into them at frequent intervals as they bil- 
lowed away toward the Baltic entrance. Singu- 
larly attractive even in winter, it must have been 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 219 

a veritable yachtsman 's paradise in summer. Ee- 
calHng the marshes and bogs of the Jade, I mar- 
velled at the restraint of the German naval officer 
whom I had heard say that he and his wife **much 
preferred Kiel to Wilhelmshaven. ' ' 

The warships in the harbour proved far less 
impressive by daylight than at night. Looming 
up through the mists in the darkness, they had 
suggested the presence of a formidable fleet. Now 
they appeared as obsolete hulks, from several of 
which even the guns had been removed. There 
was not a modern capital ship left in Kiel; in 
fact, the only warship of any class which could 
fairly lay claim to that designation was the Beg- 
ensburg, which had managed to push her broken 
nose through the canal and was now lying in- 
shore of us, apparently alongside some sort of 
quay or dock. The most interesting naval craft 
(if such a term could be applied to it) in sight was 
a floating submarine dock, anchored a cablets 
length on the port beam of the Hercules, but even 
that^— as was proved on inspection — ^was far from 
being the latest thing of its kind. 

The British ships were the object of a good 
deal of interest, especially during the first few 
hours of the day while the fog held off. Various 
and sundry small craft put off with parties to size 
us up at close range, amongst these — significant 



220 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

commeiitary on the fact that at every one of the 
conferences,, including the one held that very day, 
the Germans had advanced ** petrol shortage" as 
the reason why cars could not be provided to 
reach this or that station — being a number of 
motor launches. As all of these seemed to be in 
the hands of white-banded sailors or dockyard 
**mateys," the inference might have been drawn 
that the petrol used was not under the control 
of the naval authorities; but so many of the 
other *^ reasons,'' advanced to discourage, if not 
to obstruct, inspections which the Germans, for 
one reason or another, did not want to have made 
turned out to be fictitious, that one was tempted 
to believe that *^the absolute lack of petroP' was 
on all fours with them. 

Most of these excursion parties kept at a re- 
spectful distance, but there was one launch-load 
of men and girls from the docks, which persisted 
in circling close to the ships, and even in coming 
up under the stern of the Hercules, and offering to 
exchange cap ribbons. The two-word reply of 
one of the bluejackets to these overtures would 
hardly do to print, but its effect was crushing. 
Nothing but poor steering prevented that launch 
from taking the shortest course back to the dock- 
yard landing. 

The German Naval Armistice Commission 




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Through the Canal to the Baltic 221 

which came off to the Hercules at Kiel to discuss 
arrangements for inspection in the Baltic differed 
from that at Wilhelmshaven only in a few of the 
subordinate members. Eear-Admiral Goette con- 
tinued to preside, with the tall, blonde Von Muller, 
of the first Emden, and the shifty, pasty-faced 
Hinzmann, of the General Staif at Berlin, as his 
chief advisers. Commander Lohmann still pre- 
sided over the German sub-commission for ship- 
ping, but there was a new officer in charge of 
**air'' arrangements. This latter individual, who 
proved to be one of the most ^^Hunnish'^ Huns 
we encountered anywhere, I shall have something 
to say of in the next chapter. 

That the German Commission had been ** stif- 
fened'' under the influence of new forces in Kiel 
was evident from the opening of the conference; 
in fact, a good part of this opening Baltic sitting 
was devoted to reducing them to the same state 
of *^ sweet reasonableness'' in which they had 
risen from the closing sitting at Wilhelmshaven. 
One of the most astonishing of their contentions 
arose in connection with three unsurrendered 
U-boats, which had been discovered in the course 
of warship inspection at Wilhelmshaven. Asked 
when these might be expected ready to proceed to 
Harwich, Admiral Goette replied that his Gov- 
ernment did not consider themselves under obli- 



222 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

gation to deliver the boats at all. The justifica- 
tion advanced for this remarkable stand consti- 
tuted one of the most delightful instances of char- 
acteristic Hun reasoning that developed in the 
course of the visit. This was the gist of it : ^ ^ We 
agreed to deliver all U-boats in condition to pro- 
ceed to sea in the first fourteen days of the armis- 
tice,'^ contended the Germans; ^^but — although 
we don't deny that they should have been delivered 
in that period — the fact that they were not so de- 
livered releases us from our obligation to deliver 
them now. As evidence of our good faith, how- 
ever, we propose that the vessels in question be 
disarmed and remain in German ports. ' ' 

The Germans had so thoroughly convinced 
themselves that this fantastic interpretation 
would be accepted by the Allied Commission that 
Admiral Goette did not consider himself able to 
concede Admiral Browning's demand (that the 
three submarines should be surrendered at once) 
without referring the matter back to Berlin. Defi- 
nite settlement, indeed, was not arrived at un- 
til the final conference nearly a week later, and in 
that time news had been brought of several score 
U-boats completed, or nearing completion, in the 
yards of the Elbe and the Weser. 

There was no phase of the Allied Commission's 
activities which some endeavour was not made 



Through the Canal to the Baltic 223 

to obstruct or .circumscribe in the course of this 
opening session at Kiel. The German sub-com- 
mission for shipping reported that their Govern- 
ment did not feel called upon to grant the claim of 
the Allies for the return of vessels seized as 
prizes ; the inability to arrange for special trains 
and the lack of petrol would make it impossible 
to reach certain air stations by land, while, so 
far as the experiment station at Warnemunde was 
concerned, the armistice did not give the Allies the 
right to visit it at all; as for the Great Belt forts, 
they were already disarmed, and really not worth 
the trouble of inspecting anyway. 

And so it went through some hours, the upshot 
of it being that the Germans, as at Wilhehns- 
haven, ** vowing they would ne'er consent, con- 
sented." Merchant ship inspection began that 
afternoon, continuing throughout the remainder 
of the stay at Kiel as one steamer after another 
came in from this or that Baltic port and dropped 
anchor. The following day search of the numer- 
ous old warships was started, and the day after 
that word came that the way had even been 
cleared for the inspection of the great experimen- 
tal seaplane station at Warnemunde. For the 
first time there was promise that the work of the 
Commission would be completed within the period 
of the original armistice. 



IX 

TO WARNEMUNDE AND EUGEN 

There had been a half-mile or more of visibility 
when we got under weigh at eight o'clock, but in 
the mouth of Kiel Fiord a solid wall of fog was 
encountered, behind the impenetrable pall of which 
all objects more than a few yards ahead were 
completely cut off. The mist-muffled wails of 
horns and whistles coughed eerily in the depths 
of the blank smother to port and starboard, and 
once the beating of a bucket or saucepan heralded 
the spectre of a *^ bluff lee-boarded fishing lug- 
ger'' as the bare steerage way imparted by its 
flapping yellow mainsail carried it clear of the 
Viceroy ^s sharp stem. 

Three or four more units of that same fatalistic 
fishing fleet had been missed by equally narrow 
margins when, looming high above us as they 
sharpened out of the fog, appeared the bulging 
bows of what looked to be a large merchantman. 
At the same instant, too late by many seconds to 
be of any use as a warning, the snort of a deep- 
toned whistle ripped out in response to the queru- 
lous shriek of our own syren. 

224 



To Warnemiinde and Eiigen 225 

When two sMps, steaming on opposite courses 
at something like ten knots, meet in a fog the 
usual result is a collision, and nothing but the 
quick-wittedness of the captain of the Viceroy 
prevented one on this occasion. The stranger, in 
starboarding his helm, bared a long expanse of 
rusty paunch for the nose of the destroyer to bury 
itself in, as a sword-fish stabs a whale, and that is 
what must inevitably have happened — ^with dis- 
astrous consequences to both vessels in all prob- 
ability — had the Viceroy also attempted to avoid 
collision by turning to port. Eealizing this with 
a sure judgment, the captain fell back on an al- 
ternative which would hardly have been open to 
him with a destroyer less powerfully built and 
engined than the latest **V's.'' I have already 
told how, in the lock at Brunsbtittel, he had 
stopped his ship dead, just short of the gates, by 
going astern with the engines at the proper mo- 
ment. Here, in scarcely more time than it takes 
to tell it, he not only stopped her dead but had 
her backing (at constantly accelerating speed) 
away from the slowly turning merchantman. The 
jar (followed by a prolonged throbbing) was al- 
most as sharp as when the air-brakes are set on 
the wheels of a speeding express, and the out- 
raged wake of her, like the back of a cat whose 
fur has been rubbed the wrong way, arched in a 



226 To Kiel in the ^^ Hercules" 

tumbling fountain high above her quivering stern. 
But back she went, and so gave the burly freighter 
room to blunder by in. 

There was just time to note her high bulwarks, 
two or three suspicious-looking superstructures 
(which one's passing acquaintance with '^Q'* 
boats suggested as possibly masking guns), and 
a folded seaplane housed on the poop, before the 
menacing apparition thinned and melted into the 
fog as suddenly as it had appeared. 

**I think that ship is the Wolf/^ volunteered the 
pilot, watching with side-cast eyes the effects of 
the announcement, * * You will perhaps remember 
it as the great raider of the Indian Ocean.'' 

The captain looked up quickly from the chart 
as though about to say something; then thought 
better of it, and, with a wistful smile, turned back 
to his study of the channel. I had seen him smile 
resignedly like that a few days previously off the 
Elbe estuary when a speeding widgeon, whose line 
of flight had promised to carry it right over the 
forecastle, had sheered otf without giving him a 
shot. What he had said on that occasion was, 
**Hang the blighter; another chance missed!" 

Going aft to breakfast, I was hailed by Korvet- 

tenkapitan M (the officer commanding all 

Baltic air stations who was accompanying us to 
Warnemiinde and Rugen), warming himself at 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 227 

the engine-room hatchway, and informed that the 
ship just sighted was *Hhe famous raider, Moewe, 
that has been so many times through the Eng- 
lish blockade/^ It was he that was correct, as it 
turned out. We found the Mo ewe anchored three 
or four cables' lengths on the port bow of the 
Hercules when we returned to Kiel the following 
evening. 

They were two thoroughly typical specimens 
of their kind, the pilot and the flight commander, 
so much so that either would have been pounced 
on with delight by a cartoonist looking for a 
model for a figure of ^^Hun Brutality.'' The 
former claimed to have served most of the war in 
U-boats, and from the fact that he was only a 
** one-striper, " one reckoned that he was a pro- 
moted rating of some kind. He was tall, dark, 
and powerful of build, with hard black eyes 
glowering from under bushy brows. He talked of 
his submarine exploits with the greatest gusto, 
among these being (according to his claim) the 
launching of the torpedo which damaged the Sus- 
sex. It is possible that he was quite as useful 
a U-boat officer as he said he was (for he looked 
fully capable of doing a number of the things one 
had heard of U-boat officers doing) ; but he turned 
out, as the sequel proved, only an indifferent pilot. 

The flight officer is easiest described by saying 



228 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

that he was Hke what one would imagine Hinden- 
burg to have been at thirty-five or thereabouts. 
The resemblance to the great Field-Marshal was 
physical only, for the anti-type, far from having 
the ** bluff, blunt fighter*' air of the former, was 
a subtle intriguer of the highest order. Just how 
** subtle'* he was may be judged from the fact 
that within ten minutes of coming aboard that 
morning he had drawn one of the British officers 
aside to warn bim of the menace to England in 
Wilson's '^fourteen points," and that, a quarter 
of an hour after the snub this kindly advice won 
him, he had cornered one of the American officers 
to bid him beware of the inevitable attack his coun- 
try must very soon expect from England and 
Japan. 

A half -hour more *'by luck and lead" took us 
out of the fog, and an almost normal visibility 
made it possible for the Viceroy to increase to her 
** economic" cruising speed of seventeen knots. 
The red roofs of the summer hotels along 
Warnemtinde's waterfront began pushing above 
the horizon a little after noon, and by one we were 
heading in to where the mouth of a broad canal 
opened up behind a long stone breakwater. A 
large ferry steamer, flying the Danish flag, was 
just rounding the end of the breakwater and 
turning off to the north-west, and from the word 




"HINDY" (left) and GERMAN PILOT WHO CLAIMED TO HAVE 
LAUNCHED THE TORPEDO WHICH DAMAGED THE "SUSSEX" 



To Warnemiinde and Rligen 229 

**Abmistice'' painted on her sides in huge white 
letters we took it she was engaged in repatriating 
Allied prisoners by way of Copenhagen. As we 
closed her, this impression was confirmed by the 
sight of two men in the unmistakable uniforms of 
British officers pacing the after-deck arm-in-arm. 
Surprised that they appeared to be taking no 
notice of the Viceroy, with the White Ensign at 
her stern doing its best to flap them a message of 
encouragement, I raised my glass and scanned 
them closely. Then the dark glasses both were 
wearing, and their slow uncertain steps, at once 
suggested the sad explanation of their indiffer- 
ence. There was no doubt the sight of both was 
seriously affected, and that they were probably 
hardly able more than to feel their way around. 
As nothing less than **Eule Britannia'^ or **God 
Save the King'^ on the syren would have given 
them any hint of how things stood, we had to pass 
on unrecognized. 

Eunning a quarter of a mile up the canal, the 
Viceroy went alongside the wall a hundred yards 
above the railway station. The news of our ar- 
rival had spread quickly in the town, and among 
a considerable crowd which assembled along the 
waterfront were a number of British prisoners, 
most of them in their khaki. Several German 
sailors — one or two of them with white bands on 



230 To Kiel in tlie '^ Hercules" 

their arms — to whom the Tommies had been talk- 
ing, kept discreetly in the background, but the lat- 
ter, grinning with delight and exchanging good- 
natured chaff with the bluejackets, caught our 
mooring lines and helped make them fast. They 
looked in extremely good condition and spirits, 
the consequence — as we learned presently — of hav- 
ing had a considerable accumulation of prisoners' 
stores turned over to them since the armistice. 
Beer, they said, was the only thing they were short 
of, and this difficulty they seemed in a fair way 
to remedy when I left with the *^air" party for 
the seaplane station. 

The great Warnemunde experiment station oc- 
cupied the grounds of what appeared to have been 
some kind of a pre-war industrial or agricultural 
exposition. Crossing the canal in a launch, a few 
steps took us to and through a somewhat preten- 
tious entrance arch, from where it was several 
hundred yards to the first of a long row of wood 
and steel hangars. The Commander of the sta- 
tion had received us at the landing; the rest of 
the officers met us in the roadway in front of the 
first shed to be inspected. Evidences of the re- 
sentment they undoubtedly felt over having to 
give way in the matter of the visit (it had been 
the German contention that Warnemunde, not be- 
ing a service station, was not liable to inspection 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 231 

under the terms -of the armistice) were not lacking, 
but as these were mostly confined to scowling 
glances they did not interfere seriously with the 
work in hand. 

As the Allied Commission, in the conference of 
a couple of days previously at Kiel, had insisted on 
the visit to Warnemiinde on the grounds of satis- 
fying itself that what the Germans claimed was an 
experiment station was not used for service work, 
inspection was limited to the comparatively per- 
functory checking over of the machines against a 
list furnished in advance, seeing that they- dis- 
played no evidences of having been used for any- 
thing more than experimental flights, and ascer- 
taining that they had been properly disarmed. 
This, as soon as it became evident that the sta- 
tion was in fact quite what the Germans had 
claimed it to be, was done very rapidly, the in- 
spection of well over a hundred machines, housed 
in eight or ten different sheds, being completed 
within three hours. 

The machines were, of course, an extremely in- 
teresting assortment, for practically all of them 
were either new designs or else old ones in proc- 
ess of development. There was the last word in 
steel pontoons, with which the Germans have been 
so successful, and also a number of the very 
striking all-metal Junker machines, in the con- 



232 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

struction of which wood, and even fabric, has been 
replaced by the light but tough alloy called 
^^duraluminum." One of the German officers 
volunteered the information that the principal 
advantage of the latter over the ordinary machine 
was the fact that more of it could be salved after a 
crash. The fact that there was nothing to burn 
sometimes rendered it possible to save an injured 
pilot entangled in the wreckage, where the wood 
and fabric of an ordinary machine would have 
made him a funeral pyre. Against these advan- 
tages, he added, stood the handicap of greater 
weight and the fact that the metal wings occasion- 
ally deflected into the pilot or petrol tank a bullet 
which would have passed harmlessly through wood 
and fabric. 

There were several of the late Travemunde and 
Sahlatnig types, medium-sized machines which, 
with their powerful engines and trim lines, looked 
extremely useful. A large double-engined Gotha 
torpedo-launching seaplane was viewed with a 
good deal of interest by the experts of the party, 
because it was a type to the development of which 
it had been expected that the Germans had given 
a great deal of attention. Down to the very day 
of the armistice the Grand Fleet^ — ^whether at 
Eosyth or Scapa — ^was never considered entirely 
free from the menace of an attack by a flotilla of 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 233 

torpedo-carrying seaplanes, and it was a matter 
of considerable surprise to the sub-commission for 
naval air stations when it transpired in the course 
of their visits to the German North Sea and Baltic 
bases to find a practically negligible strength in 
these types. The almost prohibitive odds against 
getting a seaplane carrier within striking distance 
of either of the Grand Fleet bases — handicap im- 
posed by the complete surface command of the 
North Sea by the British — ^was undoubtedly re- 
sponsible for Germany's failure to develop a type 
of machine which there was little chance of finding 
an occasion to use. Even this one at Warne- 
mtinde — representing as it did the latest develop- 
ment of its type — ^was far from being equal to 
machines with which the British were practising 
torpedo-launching a year before the end of the 
war. 

The most imposing exhibit at Warnemiinde was 
a *^ giant '' seaplane rivalling in size the great 
monoplane flying boat we had seen at Norderney. 
The two were so different in type that it was 
difficult to compare them, though it is probable 
that in engine power — ^both of them had four 
engines of from 250 to 300 horse-power each — 
and in wing area they were about equal. The 
Warnemiinde machine — ^which was a biplane, with 
two pontoons instead of a **boaf — had a some- 



234 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

what greater spread of wing, but this must have 
been compensated for by the vastly greater 
breadth of those of the monoplane. Superior sea- 
worthiness had been claimed for the latter on 
account of the greater height of its wings from 
the water when afloat ; but that was ex 'parte evi- 
dence, and we had no chance to hear what Warne- 
miinde had to say in favour of its pet. 

An incident which occurred in connection with 
the inspection of the *^ giant" furnished a very 
graphic idea of the really colossal size of it. In 
order to get over it the more quickly, all of the 
several members of the Allied party climbed up 
and took a hand in the work. Whether the Ger- 
man officers thought some of the gear might be 
carried off by the visitors, whether they were 
afraid the secrets of some of their technical instru- 
ments might be discovered, or whether they were 
simply ** doing the honours of the occasion,'' we 
were never quite sure. At any rate, up swarmed 
at least a dozen of them, scrambling like a crowd 
at a ticket turnstile to get inside. In a jiffy they 
had disappeared, swallowed completely by the 
capacious fuselage. Not even a head was in sight. 
Only the clatter of many tongues and the clang of 
boots tramping on steel plates told that close to a 
score of men were jostling each other in the 
cavernous maw of the mighty ** amphibian. " 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 235 

Only the Commander of the station — a some- 
what porcine-looking individual, whose rotund 
figure furnished ample explanation why he had 
not joined the scramble — and myself were left on 
terra firma. Plainly disturbed by the thought 
that Germany's supreme achievement in aerial 
science was passing under the eye of the enemy, 
he paced up and down moodily for a minute or 
two and then, with clearing brow, came over and 
asked me what was the horse-power of the largest 
^^Inglisch Zeeblane.'^ 

*^I really can't tell you," I replied, half angry, 
half amused at the supreme cheek of the man. 

^^Ach, but vy will you not tell me?" he urged 
wheedlingly. ^^Der war iss over; ve vill now 
have no more zeecrets. Today you see all ve haf. 
Preddy soon ve come und see all you haf. There 
iss much ve can learn from you, und much you can 
learn from us. Ve vill haf no more zeecrets. ' ' 

There were several things that I wanted to say 
to that Hun optimist, and it required no little 
restraint to pass them over and confine myself to 
suggesting that he should take up the matter of 
the exchange of ** zeecrets" with Commander 

C , the Senior Officer of the party. He looked 

at the latter (who was just descending) irreso- 
lutely once or twice, and then, doubtless seeing 
nothing encouraging in the set of Commander 



236 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

C 's lean Yankee jaw, shrugged his fat 

shoulders and resumed his moody pacings. We 
encountered a number of eager ^^ searchers for 
knowledge ' ' in the course of the visit, but no other 
that I heard of who employed quite such a 
^^ Prussian mass tactics *' style of attack as this 
one. 

Going from shed to shed as the inspection 
progressed, one noticed at once the much greater 
extent to which wood had figured in their construc- 
tion than in that of those of the North Sea stations. 
Only the frames were of steel, and even the fire- 
proof asbestos sheeting which figured so exten- 
sively in the great Zeppelin sheds had been very 
sparingly employed. As this also proved to be 
the practice in the two large stations we visited 
the next day on the island of Eiigen, it was 
assumed that the comparative cheapness of wood 
in the Baltic had been responsible for the freedom 
with which it had been employed to save steel and 
concrete. The inevitable penalty of this inflam- 
mable construction had been paid at Warnemiinde, 
where the tangled masses of wreckage in the ruins 
of a burned hangar indicated that all the ma- 
chines it had contained were destroyed with the 
building. 

When we returned to the Viceroy after the in- 
spection was over, we found a number of British 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 237 

prisoners aboard as the guests of the bluejackets. 
Several of them had asked for ** rashers, or any- 
thing greasy/' but for tobacco and ^^home com- 
forts ' ' they appeared to be rather better off than 
their hosts. The captain said that he had offered 
passages back to the Hercules to any that cared to 
go, but they had all declined with thanks, saying 
that they were helping to distribute food for other 
prisoners passing through Warnemunde on their 
way home via Denmark, and that they would not 
return home until this work was finished. We left 
them without any misgivings save, perhaps, on the 
score that they seemed rather too tolerant of the 
presence among them of a number of white- 
banded German sailors. 

During our absence the German harbour master 
had come aboard to warn the captain that, as it 
was verhoten to use the turning basin after five 
o'clock, it would be necessary for him to proceed 
there before that hour. When the captain thanked 
him and replied that he hoped to be able to carry 
on without resorting to the turning basin, the 
astonished official warned him that it was highly 
dangerous to go out backwards, that even the Ger- 
man T.B.D.'s never thought of doing so mad a 
thing. The sight of the Viceroy/ going astern at a 
good ten or twelve knots straight down the middle 
of that half a mile or more of canal must have been 



238 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

something of an eye-opener to that Kaiserliche 
harbour master. 

Passing close to the railway station on the way 
out we had a brief glimpse of the sorry spectacle 
of a huge mass of Eussian prisoners, who ap- 
peared to have been dumped there from one train 
to wait for another, going heaven knows where. 
A thousand or more in number, they had over- 
flowed the narrow strip of platform under the 
train-shed, and as we passed some hundreds of 
them, huddling together like sheep for warmth and 
with no protection save the square of red blankets 
thrown over their hunched shoulders, were soaking 
up the rain which came drizzling down through the 
early winter twilight. 

*^ Eussian prisoners that we now send back to 

their homes, '^ explained Korvettenkapitan M 

as I passed his perch in the hot-air stream from 
the engine-room hatchway. *'They do not like to 
leave Germany, but we have not now the food for 
them. ' ' 

**Out of the frying-pan into the fire,'' com- 
mented the chief. *^A return to Eussia is the one 
thing left worse than what they've been through 
here. Poor devils — but listen to that! Talk 
about your bird singing in the rain " 

Deep, reverberant, pulsing like the throb of a 
mighty organ, the strains of what might have been 



To Warnemunde and Riigen 239 

either a hymn or a marching song were wafted to 
our ears on the wings of the deepening dusk. 
For two or three minutes the strangely moving 
sound, rising and falling like the roll of a surf on 
a distant shore, followed us down the canal before 
it was quenched in the roar of the accelerating 
fans as the bridge rang down for increased speed. 
The German was the first to break the silence in 
which we had listened. 

^^The Eussians are a strange people, ^^ he said, 
with a note of sincerity in his voice I had never 
remarked before. ^^ There is always sadness in 
their happiness, and always hope in their despair. 
I think they can never be broken. ' ^ 

For the first and last time I was inclined to 
agree with him. 

A three-hour run at a speed of fifteen knots 
brought us to the island of Eiigen, where we 
anchored in shallow water three or four miles off 
the station of Biig, which we were scheduled to 
inspect in the morning. It was only a fair- 
weather anchorage, however, and the lee shore, to- 
gether with a falling barometer and a rising wind, 
caused the pilot to advise running round to the 
somewhat better protection of Tromper Bay, on 
the opposite side of the island. This shift, which 
there was no real necessity for making, involved 
an alteration of plan, for the shores of Tromper 



240 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

Bay (where we now had to attempt a landing) 
were four or ^ve miles from Wiek, the second 
station to be inspected, and entirely cut off from 
communication with Bug by a long lagoon. 
Under the circumstances, the only practicable 
plan seemed to be to walk to Wiek across the 
island, go from there to Biig by launch, and then 
endeavour to rejoin the destroyer at her first 
anchorage of the night before, to which she would 
return in the interim. This intricate itinerary 
we finally succeeded in following, but it almost 
killed poor ^ ^ Hindenburg, ^ ' the fat Grerman flying 
officer escorting the party, who had confidently 
counted on doing all of his travelling by launch. 

The motor launch refusing to start in the morn- 
ing, the whaler was used to land the inspection 
party. As there appeared to be nothing in the 
way of a quay or landing-stage, the most likely 
place to get ashore seemed to be a dismantled pier, 
the piles of which were visible from the deck of 
the destroyer. **Hindy'^ (the name had already 
begun to stick to him), however, promptly ap- 
pointing himself as pilot, in spite of the fact that 
he knew no more of that particular stretch of coast 
than any one else in the party, ruled in favour of 
landing directly upon the beach. Pulling straight 
in on the course he indicated, the heavily laden 
whaler grounded a couple of hundred yards from 




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To Warnemiinde and Riigen 241 

the shore, and was only worried off by all hands 
going aft and raising the stranded bow. Com- 
mander C took over the direction of affairs 

at this juncture, and the incidence of events was 
such that ^'Hindy*' did not essay the leadership 
role again for some hours, and even then but 
transiently. 

The old pier, to the end of which the whaler was 
now pulled, had evidently been wrecked in a storm 
of many years before and never repaired. Its 
planking was gone entirely, but two strings of 
timbers running along the tops of the tottering 
piles offered a possible, though precarious, means 
of reaching the two-hundred-yard-distant beach. 
When two of the American officers clambered up, 
however, they found the timbers so slippery with 
moss that it was a sheer physical impossibility to 
stand erect and walk along them. The only alter- 
native was to sit astride one of them and slither 
along shoreward, a few inches at a time. This 
they did, pushing along a thick roll of filthy slime 
in front of them as they went, and stopping every 
now and then to disengage the end of a projecting 
spike that was holding their trousers. Following 
behind one of them, I found the progress both vile 
and painful, even after his wiggle-waggle advance 
had swabbed up the worst of the slime and un- 
covered the longest of the spikes lurking to am- 



242 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

bush the seat of my trousers. It must have been 
unspeakable for the two self-sacrificing pioneers. 

Halfway in, the timbers, less exposed to the 
splashing spray, offered a better footing, and from 

there, following the lead of Commander C , we 

managed to stand up and walk. Not until we 
reached the end and jumped o:ff on to the firm sand 
and began to count noses before striking off inland 
did any one notice that **Hindy'' was missing. 
The account of that worthy 's doings in the mean- 
time I had that evening after our return to the 
Viceroy from the coxswain of the whaler. 

For the first time ^^Hindy*' had neglected to 
insist on the precedence due to his rank as a 
^^three-striper" and push out in the lead at a 
landing. On the contrary, it appears, he had 
lingered in the stern sheets of the whaler until the 
last of the Allied officers had slid along out of 
hearing, and then coolly ordered two of the crew 
to wade ashore carrying him between them. He 
would show them, he said, how the German sailors 
joined hands to make a chair for their officers on 
such an occasion. Failing in this manoeuvre, he 
had suggested that two of the oars be lashed to- 
gether with the strip of bunting in the stern sheets 
and laid along across the tops of the piles to give 
him a firm footing. Two of the bluejackets, he 
explained, could go with him and ^* relay'* this im- 



To Warnemiinde and Rligen 243 

provised gangway along ahead. It was only when 
the coxswain, in English probably too idiomatic to 
convey its full meaning to a German, expressed 
his lack of sympathy with this ingenious proposal 
that he screwed up his nerve to tackling the 
** wiggle-waggle'' mode of progression. 

Given a leg up by the whaler's crew, he wriggled 
astride the nearest longitudinal strip of timber 
and began his snail-like, shoreward crawl. At the 
end of a quarter of an hour he had barely reached 
the less slippery timbering halfway in, but here, 
instead of getting up on his hind legs, as the rest 
of us had done, and ambling along on his feet, the 
shivering wretch still persisted in embracing the 
slimy beam with his fat thighs and continuing to 
worry on * ^wiggle-waggle." 

Finally Commander C , whose eyes for the 

last fifteen minutes had been turning back and 
forth between the ludicrously swaying figure on 
the pier and the hands of his watch, uttered an 
impatient exclamation and squared his shoulders 
with the air of a man who has come to a great 
decision. 

^^We're already two hours behind time," he 
said, buttoning his waterproof and pulling on his 
gloves, **and it's touch and go whether we can 
finish in time to return tonight to Kiel per 
schedule. It's a cert we won't make it if we have 



244 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules " , 

to wait any longer for our tortoise-shaped and 
tortoise-gaited friend out there. There's a dis- 
agreeable duty to be performed, and since it is not 
of a nature that I can conscientiously order one 
of my subordinate officers to do, I guess it's up to 
me to pull it off myself. Kindly note that I'm 
wearing gloves." 

Vaulting lightly from the sand to a line of tim- 
bering running parallel, at a distance of about five 
feet, to the one upon which ^^Hindy" was slither- 
ing along, he trotted out opposite the latter, 
reached across, lifted that protesting bundle of 
aoiatomy to his feet, and then, leading him by the 
hand, started back for the beach. The German 
followed like Mary's Little Lamb as long as he 
had the dynamic pressure of the American's 
fingers to give him courage, but when Commander 

C withdrew his guiding hand after he had 

led his fellow tight-rope walker in above the sand, 
^^Hindy's" nerve went with it. Trying to slud- 
der down astride the timber again after tottering 
drunkenly for a moment, he lost his balance and 
tried to jump. The drop was not over five feet, 
and to soft sand at that; but the remains of a 
riveter I once saw fall to the pavement of Broad- 
way from the fortieth story of the new Singer 
building looked less inert than the shivering pan- 
cake that fat Prussian made when he hit the 



To Warnemiinde and Rligen 245 

beach of Eiigen.- There was really very little to 
choose between it and a flatulent jelly-fish slowly 
dissolving in the embrace of a mass of stranded 
seaweed a few yards away ; indeed, the subtle sug- 
gestion of that comparison may have had some- 
thing to do with the reflex action behind a kick I 
saw some one aim at the jelly-fish in passing. 

That was the last we saw of **Hindy" (except 
as a wavering blur on the rearward horizon) for 
nearly two hours. 

Striking inland through the dunes and a planta- 
tion of young pine trees, we emerged at a cross- 
road where a signboard conveyed the information 
that Wiek (our immediate objective) was six and 
four-tenths kilometres distant. **If we can hike 
that four miles inside of an hour there's a fair 
chance of cleaning up the whole job today,'' said 

Commander C , striking out along the lightly 

metalled highway with a swinging stride. 
** *Hindy' will have to get along as best he can. 
We won't need him for the inspection anyhow." 

Passing several rather dismal summer hotels 
(one of which was called the ** Strand Palace"), 
we came to a picturesque little village of brick 
and thatch houses, with brightly curtained win- 
dows, and standing in well-kept flower gardens. 
The villagers evidently a half -agricultural, half- 
fisher folk — could have had no warning of our 



246 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

coming, as even the station -at Wiek was expecting 
us from the opposite direction, and by launch. 
Quite uninstructed in the matter of adopting 
^^ conciliatory'^ tactics (as those of so many of the 
places previously visited had so plainly been), 
they simply went their own easy way, displaying 
neither fear, resentment, nor even a great amount 
of curiosity. Most of the shops, except those of 
the butchers, were fairly well stocked, the dis- 
plays of Christmas toys (among which were some 
very ingeniously constructed * ^working'' Zeppe- 
lins) being really attractive. 

Beyond the village the Wiek road, which turned 
off at right angles from the main highway, became 
no more than a muddy track. Deeply rutted and 
slippery with the last of the snow which had 
drifted into it from a recent storm, walking in it 
became so laborious that we finally took to the 
fields, across the light sandy loam of which we just 
managed to maintain the f our-miles-an-hour stride 
necessary to keep from falling behind schedule. 
The several peasants encountered (mostly women 
with baskets of beets or cabbages on their backs) 
regarded us with stolid impersonal disinterest, 
and seemed hardly equal to the mental effort of 
figuring out where the motley array of uniforms 
came from. 

A tall spire gave us the bearing for Wiek, and 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 247 

we passed close by the ancient stone church which 
it surmounted in skirting the village on a short- 
cut to the air station. This took us to the rear 
entrance of the latter (instead of the main one 
where we were naturally expected to come) and 
had the interesting sequel of bringing us face to 
face with a sentry wearing a red band on his 
sleeve, the first of that particular brand of revolu- 
tionist we had encountered. Although failing to 
stand at attention as we approached, he was other- 
wise quite respectful in his demeanour and made 
haste to dispatch a messenger informing the Com- 
mander of the station of our arrival. A number 
of other ** red-banders ' * were seen in passing 
through the barracks area on the way to the sheds, 
one of them even going so far as to click heels and 
salute. 

In spite of the flutter of red at the rear, there 
was no evidence of anything Bolshevik in the dis- 
play set out for us in the shop-window. The men 
lounging about the sheds fell in at once on the 
order of the Commander, paraded smartly, and 
when dismissed showed no disposition to hang 
about the doors, as had occasionally been the case 
at other stations. They apparently had not even 
insisted on one of their representatives being 
present during the inspection. None but the five 
or six officers receiving the party conducted it 



248 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

around. These were all keen-eyed, quick-moving 
youngsters, hut the fact that they were com- 
paratively sparsely decorated seemed to indicate 
that the station was not of an importance to com- 
mand the services of the * * star turn ' ' men we had 
seen at Nordemey, Borkum, and other North Sea 
bases. 

There was one thing which turned up in the 
course of the inspection which was not upon the 
list furnished us by the Germans, and that was a 
large stack of second-hand furniture which I 
stumbled across in an out-of-the-way corner of 
the first shed visited. An unmistakable French 
name on the back of a red plush-upholstered divan 
first suggested the lot was an imported one, and 
looking closer I discovered a half-obliterated 
maker ^s mark, with the letters ^*Brux-l-s" fol- 
lowing it. Diverting one of the inspecting officers 
in that direction as opportunity offered, I asked 
him what he thought the word had been. *^ Prob- 
ably the Belgian spelling of Brussels," he replied 
promptly, **and certainly the English spelling of 
loot. ' * When the German Commander chanced to 
mention, a few minutes later, that his flight had 
only recently come from Zeebrugge, both con- 
jectures seemed to be confirmed. 

The inspection was over by the time **Hindy" 
arrived, and we departed for Blig immediately 



To Warnemlinde and Rligen 249 

he had completed the wash-down and brush-up 
that his brother officers, who treated him with a 
good deal of deference, insisted on his having. 
He was too dead beat to display temper when 
he had been bundled into the launch, and he im- 
pressed me as telling the bare literal truth when 
he said it was the hardest walk he had ever taken 
in his life. 

A half -hour's run brought the launch alongside 
the landing-stage at Bug, which ideally located 
station occupied a quarter of a mile of the narrow 
spit of sand separating the broad, shallow lagoon 
we had just crossed from the open Baltic. Con- 
crete runways sloped down to both strands, so 
that seaplanes could be launched in either direc- 
tion. It was an admirably planned and equipped 
station in every respect. An hour's inspection 
showed that the provisions of the armistice, here 
as at all of the other stations visited, had been 
satisfactorily carried out. A novel feature of the 
visit was the presence of a couple of photogra- 
phers — evidently official ones, judging from the 
fine machines they had — ^who waylaid the party at 
every corner and exposed a large number of 
plates. 

^^Hindy,'' who had disappeared shortly after 
we landed, turned up again about the time the 
inspection of the last hangar was completed, pick- 



250 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

ing his teeth and considerably restored in aplomb 
by the hearty mittagessen he had regaled himself 
with at the Commander's mess. Not until then 
were we informed that the station had no launch 
or boat of any kind available on the Baltic side. 
This meant that the Viceroy-^she had now come 
to anchor three or four miles off-shore — ^would 
have to send a boat in for us, and that an hour's 
time had been wasted before making a signal for 
it. Hastily writing a message requesting that the 
motor launch or whaler be sent in to the landing, 

Commander C handed it to the Commander 

of the station, suggesting that it be made by 
** Visual'' to the Viceroy in International Morse. 
Here **Hindy," brave with much beer, asserted 
his authority again. Snatching the paper from 
the station Commander's hand, he read over the 
signal with a frown of disapproval, and then 
handed it back to Commander C . 

*^That is much too long and complicated for a 
German signalman to send in English," he 
growled. **You should write only, *Send boat 
immediately. ' That is quite enough. ' ' 

There was a look in Commander C 's face 

like that it had worn when he turned and left 
^^Hindy" in a heap on the beach by the jelly-fish, 
but he controlled himself and spoke with consider- 
able restraint. 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 251 

** Since the Viceroy is not my private yacht,'* 
he said quietly, ^^any signal I make to her will 
begin ^Bequest.' I might add that if I were her 
captain, and a passenger of mine made me a signal 
like the one you suggest, he could wait till — till 
the Baltic froze over before I'd send a boat to 
take him off. Unless you're prepared to wait 
that long, you can't do better than see that the 
signal is made exactly as I have written it. ' ' 

In spite of its ^ length and complication," that 
signal, as we saw it later in the Viceroy, was 
identical with the original to a T. 

It was rather hard luck that Biig, which was the 
first station we visited without carrying our own 
lunch in the form of sandwiches, was also the only 
one where we were not offered shelter and refresh- 
ment. **Hindy" disappeared again during the 
next hour of waiting, and even had to be sent for 
when the whaler finally did arrive. The rest of 
us were so thoroughly chilled from standing out 
in the biting Baltic wind that we were only too 
glad to warm up a bit by ** double-banking" the 
oars with the whaler 's crew on the pull back to the 
destroyer. The sight of American and British 
officers bending to the sweeps with common blue- 
jackets created a tremendous furore at the station. 
The photographers rushed out to the end of the 
jetty to make a permanent record of the astonish- 



252 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

ing sight, and from the significant glances all of 
the Germans were exchanging one gathered that 
they thought that theirs was not the only Navy in 
which there had been a revolution. 

Climbing up to the bridge shortly after the 
Viceroy got under weigh for the run back to Kiel, 
I found the captain on watch with a hulking Num- 
ber 8-bore shot-gun under his arm, at which 
vicious weapon the German pilot, pressing as far 
away from it as the restricted space allowed, kept 
stealing apprehensive sidelong glances with eyes 
ostensibly searching the horizon through his 
binoculars. On asking the captain what the 
artillery was for, he motioned me back beside the 
range-finder stand, where he presently joined me. 

**I'm watching for ducks — great place for them 
along here,'* he said in a low voice; *^but don't 
give it away to the Hun. He seems to think it's 

for Mm. It's old B 's gun. He shot ducks 

with it from the bridge of his E-boat all over the 
Bight during the war. ' ' 

*^You don't mean to say that you'd stop the 
destroyer and circle back to pick up a duck in case 
you happepned to wing one?" I asked incredu- 
lously. 

^^ Wouldn't I?" he laughed. **Just tumble up 
if you hear a shot and see. There 's no finer duck- 



To Warnemiinde and Riigen 253 

boat in the world tlian a destroyer if you got the 
sea room to handle her in/' 

It was an hour or two later that I was shaken 
out of a doze on a ward-room divan by a sudden 
jar, followed by the threshing of reversed screws. 
*^The skipper's got his bird,'' I thought, and 
forthwith scrambled out and up the ladder, es- 
pecially anxious to arrive in time to see the ex- 
pressions on the face of the Germans when they 
realized that the ^*mad Englander" was going 
back in his warship to pick up a duck. Compared 
to that it turned out to have been an event of no 
more than passing interest which had happened. 
The pilot (perhaps because his mind was absorbed 
in the menace of that terrible 8-bore) had merely 
missed — ^by three or four miles as it transpired 
presently — the gate of the anti-submarine net 
fencing off that neck of the Baltic, with the result 
that the Viceroy had barged into that barrage at 
something like seventeen knots. Cutting through 
the first of what proved to be a double net, she 
brought up short against the second, the while her 
spinning propellers wound in and chewed to bits 
a considerable length of the former. 

The seas were agitated for a half-mile on either 
side by the straining of the outraged booms, while 
from the savagely slashing screws floated up a 



254 To Kiel in the '^Hercules" 

steady stream of mangled metal floats like 
Wienerwursts emerging from a sausage machine. 
Luckily, the cables of the nets were rusted and 
brittle, so that the propellers readily tore loose 
from them without injury. Backing off clear, the 
pilot ran down the boom until the buoys marking 
the gate were sighted, and from there it was com- 
paratively open going to Kiel, which we reached at 
nine-thirty that evening. 



JUTLAND AS A GERMAIT SAW IT 

It must have been the unspeakable position of 
humiliation he found himself in as a consequence 
of being ignored, flouted, and even openly insulted 
by the men he had once treated as no more worthy 
of consideration than the deck beneath his feet 
that was responsible for the fact that the German 
naval officer with whom the members of the staff 
of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission were 
thrown in contact almost invariably assumed an 
air of injured martyrdom, missing no oppor- 
tunity to draw attention to, and endeavour to 
awaken sympathy in, his sad plight. He took 
advantage of any kind of a pretext to **tell his 
troubles,'* and when nothing occurred in the 
natural course of events to provide an excuse, he 
invented one. Thus, a Korvettenkapitan in one 
of the ships searched at Wilhelmshaven took ad- 
vantage of the fact that a man to whom he gave 
an order about opening a water-tight door in a 
bulkhead slouched over and started discussing 
with the white-banded representative of the Work- 
men's and Soldiers' Council, to speak at some 

255 



256 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

length of the ** terrible situation '^ with which he 
had been faced at the time when the High Sea 
Fleet had been ordered out last November for a 
decisive naval battle. The filthy condition his 
ship was in furnished the inspiration for another 
officer to tell at some length of how he bad hung 
his head with shame since the day he had been 
baulked of *^The Day.'' An ex-submarine officer 
— acting as pilot in one of the British destroyers 
in the Baltic — did not feel that he could leave the 
ship without setting right some comments on Ger- 
man naval gunnery, which he had found in a 
London paper left in his cabin. 

And so it went. Now and then one of them, 
after volunteering an account of something in his 
own naval experience, would counter with some 
more or less shrewdly interpolated query calcu- 
lated to draw a *^ revealing" reply; but for the 
most p-art they were content with a passive 
listener. That fact relieved considerably the em- 
barrassment this action on the part of the Ger- 
mans placed Allied officers, who were under orders 
to hold no ^* unnecessary conversation" in the 
course of their tours of inspection. A *^ mono- 
logue ' ' could in no way be construed as a * * conver- 
sation," and when, as was almost invariably the 
case, it was up on a subject in which the *^ audi- 
ence" was deeply interested, it was felt that there 



Jutland as a German Saw It 257 

was no contravention of the spirit of the order in 
listening to it. The statements and comment I 
am setting down in this article were heard in the 
course of such *^ monologues'' delivered by this or 
that German naval officer with whom I was thrown 
— often for as long as two or three days at stretch 
— in connection with the journeys and inspection 
routine of the party to which I chanced to be at- 
tached at the moment. In only two or three in- 
stances — notably in the case of an officer in the 
flying service who endeavoured to dissuade us 
from visiting the Zeppelin station at Tondern by 
giving a false account of the damage inflicted in 
the course of the British bombing raid of last 
summer — did statements made under these circum- 
stances turn out to be deliberate untruths. On the 
contrary, indeed, much that I first heard in this 
way I have later been able to confirm from other 
sources, and to this — statements which there is 
good reason to believe are quite true — I am en- 
deavouring to confine myself here. In matter of 
opinions expressed, the German naval officer has, 
of course, the same right to his own as has anybody 
else, and, as one of the few things remaining to 
him at the end of the war that he did have a right 
to, I did not, and shall not, try to dispute them. 

Perhaps the one most interesting fact brought 
out in connection with all I heard in this way — it 



258 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

is confirmed, directly and indirectly, from so many 
different sources that I should consider it as 
definitely established beyond all doubt— was that 
at no time from August, 1914, to November, 1918, 
did the German seriously plan for a stand-up, give- 
and-tahe fight to a finish with the British Fleet. 
Never, not in the flush of his opening triumphs on 
land, nor yet even in the desperation of final de- 
feat, did the hottest heads on the General Naval 
Staff at Berlin believe that there was sufficient 
chance of a victory in a gunnery duel to make it 
worth while trying under any conditions whatever. 
The way a number of officers referred to their final 
attempt to take the High Sea Fleet to sea after it 
became apparent that Ludendorff was beaten be- 
yond all hope of recovery in France, gave the 
impression at first that an **all ouf action was 
contemplated, that all was to be hazarded on a 
single throw, win or lose. It is probable, even, 
that the great majority of the officers afloat, and 
certainly all of the men (for fear of the results of 
such an action is the reason ascribed by all for the 
series of mutinies which finally put the navy out of 
the reckoning as a fighting force) believed this to 
be the case. But those officers who, either before 
or after the event, were in a position to know the 
details of the real plans, were in substantial agree- 
ment that it was not intended to bring the High 





Xfl 



[^ 
O 

H 

H 

H 

xn 
o 

<«: 



o 

« 

(I, 
O 

I— I 



Jutland as a German Saw It 259 

Sea Fleet into action with the Grand Fleet, but 
rather to use it as a bait to expose the latter to a 
submarine ^'ambush'' on a scale ten times greater 
than anything of the kind attempted before, and 
then to lure such ships as survived the U-boat at- 
tack into a minefield trap. Should a sufficiently 
heavy toll have been taken of the capital ships of 
the Grand Fleet in this way, then — but not until 
then — ^would the question of a general fleet action 
have been seriously considered. 

But although the General Naval Staff, and 
doubtless most of the senior officers of the Ger- 
man navy, realized from the outset that the High 
Sea Fleet would certainly be hopelessly out- 
matched in a gunnery battle and that their only 
chance of victory would have to come through a 
reduction of the strength of the Grand Fleet in 
capital ships by mine or torpedo, the greatest 
efforts were made to prevent any such compre- 
hension of the situation finding its way to the 
lower decks. The men were constantly assured 
that their fleet was quite capable of winning a 
decisive victory at any time that the necessity 
arose, and there is not doubt that they believed 
this implicitly — until the day after Jutland. Then 
they knew the truth, and they never recovered 
from the effects of it. That was where Jutland 
marked very much more of an epoch for the Ger- 



260 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

,inan navy than it did for the British. The latter, 
cheated out of a victory which was all but within 
its grasp, was more eager than ever to renew the 
fight at the first opportunity. The several very 
salutary lessons learned at a heavy cost — and not 
the least of these was a very wholesome respect 
for German gunnery — ^were not forgotten. Struc- 
tural defects were corrected in completed ships 
and avoided in those building. Technical equip- 
ment, which had been found unequal to the occa- 
sion, was replaced. New systems were evolved 
where the old had proved wanting. Great as was 
the Grand Fleet increase in size from Jutland 
down to the end of the war, its increase of effi- 
ciency was even greater. 

With the High Sea Fleet, though several notable 
units were added to its strength during the last 
two years of the war, in every other respect it 
deteriorated steadily from Jutland right down to 
the mutinies which were the forerunners of the 
great surrender. This was due, far more than 
to anything else, to the fact that the real hopeless- 
ness of opposing the Grand Fleet in a give-and- 
take fight began to sink home to the Germans from 
the moment the first opening salvoes of the latter 
smothered the helpless and disorganized units of 
the High Sea Fleet in that last half -hour before 
the shifting North Sea mists and the deepening 



Jutland as a German Saw It 261 

twiliglit saved tkem from the annihilation they 
had invited in trying to destroy Beatty's battle- 
cruisers before Jellicoe arrived. What the most 
of their higher officers had always known, the men 
knew from that day on, and, cowed by that knowl- 
edge, were never willing to go into battle again. 
From what I gathered from a number of sources I 
have no hesitation in affirming that, up to Jutland, 
the men of the High Sea Fleet would have taken 
it out in the full knowledge that it was to meet the 
massed naval might of Britain, and, moreover, 
that they would have gone into action confidently 
and bravely, just as they did at Jutland. But it 
is equally clear that, after Jutland, any move 
which the men themselves knew was likely to bring 
them into action with the British battle fleet would 
instantly have precipitated the same kind of revolt 
as that which started at Kiel last November and 
culminated in the surrender. It was the increas- 
ing ^^jumpiness" of the men, causing them to sus- 
pect that every sally out of harbour might be pre- 
liminary to the action which they had been living 
in increasing dread of every day and night for the 
preceding two years and a half, which finally made 
it practically impossible for the Germans to get 
out into the Bight sufficient forces to protect even 
their mine-sweeping craft. As a consequence, it 
is by no means unlikely that the continuation of 



262 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

the war for another few months might well have 
fonnd the German navy, U-boats and all, effectu- 
ally immobilized in harbour behind ever-widening 
barriers of mines. 

By long odds the most reasoned and illuminative 
discussion I heard of German naval policy, from 
first to last, was that of an officer who was Gunnery 
Lieutenant of the Deutschland at Jutland, and 
whom I met through his having had charge of the 
arrangements of the visits of the airship party of 
the Allied Naval Commission to the various Zep- 
pelin stations in the North Sea littoral. Of a 
prominent militarist family — he claimed that his 
father was a director of Krupps — and a great 
admirer of the Kaiser (whom I once heard him 
refer to as an * * idealist who did all that he could 
to prevent the war'0> he was extremely well in- 
formed on naval matters, both those of his own 
country and — so far as German information went 
— the Allies. Harbouring a very natural bitter- 
ness against the revolution, and especially against 
the mutinous sailors of the navy, he spoke the 
more freely because he felt that he had no future 
to look forward to in Germany, which (as he told 
me on a number of occasions) he intended to leave 
as soon as the way was open for him to go to South 
America or the Far East. Also, where he con- 
fined himself to statements of fact rather than 



Jutland as a German Saw It 263 

opinion or conjecture, lie spoke truly. I liave yet 
to find an instance in which he made an intentional 
endeavour to create a false impression. 

It was in the course of our lengthy and some- 
what tedious railway journey to the Zeppelin sta- 
tion at Nordholz that Korvettenkapitan C 

first alluded to his life in the High Sea Fleet. **I 
was the gunnery officer of the DeutscMand during 
the first two years of the war/' he volunteered as 
he joined me at the window of the corridor of our 
special car, from which I was trying to catch a 
glimpse of the suburban area of stagnant Bremer- 
haven; ^^but I transferred to the Zeppelin service 
as soon as I could after the battle of Horn Eeef 
because I felt certain — from the depression of the 
men, which seemed to get worse rather than better 
as time went on — that there would never be an- 
other naval battle. Although we lost few ships 
(less than you did by a considerable margin, I 
think I am correct in saying), yet the terrible 
battering we received from only a part of the 
English fleet, and especially the way in which we 
were utterly smothered during the short period 
your main battle fleet was in action, convinced the 
men that they were very lucky to have got away 
at all, and seemed to make them determined never 
to take chances against such odds again. I knew 
that if we ever got them into action again, it would 



264 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

have to be by tricking them — making them think 
they were going out for something else — and that 
is why I felt sure the day of our surface navy was 
over, and why I went into the Zeppelin service to 
get beyond contact with the terrible dry-rot that 
began eating at the hearts of the High Sea Fleet 
from the day they came home from the battle of 
Horn Eeef. What has happened since then has 
proved my fears were well founded, for the men, 
becoming more and more suspicious every time 
preparations were made to go to sea, finally re- 
fused to go out at all. And that was the end." 

Commander C (to give his equivalent Brit- 
ish rank) volunteered a good deal more about Jut- 
land on this occasion, as well as of the strategy 
in connection with those final plans which went 
awry through the failure of men, but it will be 
best, perhaps, to let this appear in its proper se- 
quence in a connected account of what he told, in 
the course of the several days we were thrown 
together, of the German naval problems gener- 
ally, and his own experiences and observations at 
Horn Eeef in particular. 

*^We were greatly disappointed when England 
came into the war," he said, '^but hardly dis- 
mayed. We had built all our ships on the theory 
that it was the English fleet they were to fight 
iagainst, and we felt confident that we had plans 



Jutland as a Grerman Saw It 265 

that had a good chance of ultimately proving suc- 
cessful. But those plans did not contemplate — 
either at the outset, or at any subsequent stage of 
the war down to the very end — a gunnery battle to 
a finish. The best proof of that fact is the way the 
guns were mounted in our capital ships, with four 
aft and only two forward. That meant that their 
role was to inflict what damage they could in swift 
attacks, and that they were expected to do their 
heaviest fighting while being chased back to har- 
bour. Since the British fleet had something like 
a three-to-two advantage over us in modem cap- 
ital ships, and about two-to-one in weight of 
broadside, I think you will agree that this was 
not only the best plan for us to follow, but prac- 
tically the only one. 

**I think it will hardly surprise you when I say 
that, up to the outbreak of the war, we knew a 
great deal more about your navy than you did 
about ours. To offset that — and of much greater 
importance — is the fact that your knowledge of 
our navy and its plans during the war was far 
better than ours of yours. You always seem to 
score in the end. But at the outset, as I have 
said, we were the better informed, and, among 
other things, we knew that we had better mines 
than you had, and (as I think was fully demon- 
strated during the first two years) we had a far 



266 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

better conception in advance of the possibilities 
of using them — ^both offensively and defensively 
— than you had. During the first two years and a 
half your mines turned out to be even worse 
than we had expected, and it is an actual fact that 
some of the more reckless of our U-boat com- 
manders used to fish them up and tow them back 
to base to make punchbowls of. In the last twenty 
months you not only had two or three types of 
mine (one of them American, I think) that were 
better than anything we ever had, but you were 
also using them on a scale, and with an effective- 
ness, we had never dreamed of. 

*^We also thought we had a better torpedo than 
you had — that it would run farther, straighter, 
keep depth better, and do more damage when it 
struck. I still think we have something of the 
best of it on that score, though at no time was our 
superiority so great as we reckoned. Your tor- 
pedoes ran better than they detonated, and — es- 
pecially in the first two years — a very large num- 
ber of fair hits on all classes of our lighter craft 
were spoiled by ^duds.^ This, I am sorry to say, 
was not reported nearly so frequently during the 
last year and a half. 

**But it was on the torpedo that we counted to 
wear down the British margin of strength in 
capital ships to a point where the High Sea Fleet 





'HERCULES," WITH THREE V-CLASS DESTROYERS IN KIEL HARBOR 



Jutland as a German Saw It 267 

would have a fair chance of success in opposing 
it. We expected that our submarines would take 
a large and steady toll of any warships you en- 
deavoured to blockade us with, and that they 
would even make the risk of patrol greater than 
you would think it worth while to take. Although 
we made an encouraging beginning by sinking 
three cruisers, we were doomed to heavy disap- 
pointment over the U-boat as a destroyer of war- 
ships. We failed to reckon on the almost com- 
plete immunity the speed of destroyers, light 
cruisers, battle-cruisers, and even battleships 
would give them from submarine attack, and we 
never dreamed how terrible an enemy of the 
U-boat the destroyer — especially after the inven- 
tion of the depth-charge — ^would develop into. 
As for the use of the submarine against merchant 
shipping, to our eternal regret we never saw what 
it could do until after we had tried it. If any 
German had had the imagination to have realized 
this in advance, so that we could have had a fleet 
of a hundred and fifty U-boats ready to launch on 
an unrestricted campaign against merchant ship- 
ping the day war was declared, I think you will 
not deny that England would have had to sur- 
render within two months. 

*'We also made the torpedo a relatively more 
important feature of the armament of all of our 



268 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

ships — from destroyers to battleships — than you 
did. They were to be our *4ast ditch '^ defence 
in the event of our being drawn into a general 
fleet action — just such an action, in fact, as the 
battle of Horn Reef was. We knew all about 
your gunnery up to the outbreak of the war, and 
the fact that the big-gun target practices were 
only at moderate ranges — mostly under 16,000 
metres — told us that you were not expecting to 
engage us at greater ranges. But all the time we 
were meeting with good success in shooting at 
ranges up to, and even a good deal over, 20,000 
metres, and so we felt sure of having all the best 
of a fight at such ranges. We knew that our 
11-inch guns would greatly out- range your 12-inch 
(perhaps you already know that even the 8.2-inch 
guns of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out-ranged 
the 12-inch guns of the Invincible and Indefatig- 
able at the Falkland battle), and we hoped they 
might even have the best of your 13.5 's. We also 
knew that our ships were better built than yours 
to withstand the plunging fall of long-distance 
shots, and we felt sure that our explosive was 
more powerful than your lyddite. I am not sure 
that this proved to be the case, though there is no 
question that our hits generally did more harm 
than yours because more of them penetrated decks 
and armour. 



Jutland as a German Saw It 269 

* * Feeling confident, then, of having the best of a 
long-range action, our plan was, as I have said, 
to use the torpedo as a *last ditch' defence in 
case the English fleet tried to reduce the range to 
one at which it could be sure of securing a higher 
percentage of hits and thus making the greater 
weight of its broadside decisively felt. In such a 
contingency we planned to literally fill the sea with 
torpedoes, on the theory that enough of them must 
find their targets to damage the enemy fleet suffi- 
ciently to force it to open out the range again, and 
perhaps to cripple it to an extent that would open 
the way for us to win a decisive victory. Theo- 
retically, this plan was quite sound, for it was 
based on the generally recognized fact that from 
three to five torpedoes — the number varying ac- 
cording to the range and the interval between the 
targets — launched one after the other at a line of 
ships cannot fail to hit at least one of them, pro- 
viding, of course, that they all run properly. 

^^Well, almost the identical conditions under 
which we had planned and practised to run our 
torpedo barrage were reproduced at Horn Eeef 
when the British battle fleet came into action near 
the end of the day, but it failed because the Eng- 
lish Admiral anticipated it — probably because he 
knew in advance, as you always seemed to know 
everything we were doing or intended to do, what 



270 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

to expect — ^by turning away while still at the ex- 
treme hmit of effective torpedo range. Most of 
our spare torpedoes went for almost nothing, so 
far as damage to the enemy was concerned, in that 
* barrage,' and it would have gone hard with us 
had there been enough daylight remaining for the 
English fleet to have continued the action. Its 
superior speed would have allowed it to make the 
range whatever its commander desired, and — even 
before half of the battleships of it were tiring — ^we 
were absolutely crushed by sheer weight of metal, 
and it would not have been long before every one 
of our ships would have been incapable of reply- 
ing. You will see, then, that, in the sense that it 
postponed the brunt of the attack of the English 
battle fleet attack until it was too late for it to be 
effective, our torpedo barrage undoubtedly saved 
the High Sea Fleet from complete destruction. 

**Our lavish expenditure of torpedoes at that 
juncture, though, compelled us to forgo the great 
opportunity which was now presented to us to do 
your fleet heavy damage in a night action. Dark- 
ness, as you know, goes far to equalize the differ- 
ence in numbers of opposing fleets, and makes an 
action very largely a series of disjointed duels be- 
tween ship and ship. In these duels the odds are 
all in favour of the ship with the best system of 
recognition, the most pow:erful searchlights, and 



Jutland as a German Saw It 271 

the most effective searcliliglit control. We be- 
lieved that we had much the best of you in all of 
these particulars, and (although it was our plan 
to avoid contact as far as possible on account of 
our shortage of torpedoes) such encounters as 
could not be avoided proved this to be true beyond 
any doubt. You seemed to have no star shells at 
all (so far as any of our ships reported), and our 
searchlights were not only more powerful than 
yours, but seemed also to be controlled in a way 
to bring them on to the target quicker. It may 
be that the fact that our special night-glasses 
were better than anything of the kind you had 
contributed to this result. In any case, in almost 
every clash in the darkness it was the German's 
guns which opened fire first. Practically every 
one of our surviving ships reported this to have 
been the case, but with those that were lost, of 
course, it is likely the English opened up first. 
Another way in which we scored decisively in this 
phase of the action was through solving the reply 
to your night recognition signal, or at least a part 
of it. One of our cruisers managed to bluff one 
of your destroyers into revealing this, and then 
passed it on to as many of our own ships as she 
could get in touch with. We only had the first 
two or three letters of the reply to your challenge, 
but the showing of even these is known to have 



272 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

been enough to make more than one of your de- 
stroyer commanders hesitate a few seconds in 
launching a torpedo, only to realize his mistake 
after he had been swept with a broadside from the 
secondary armament of a cruiser or battleship 
which left him in a sinking condition. It was an 
EngHsh destroyer that hesitated at torpedoing the 
Deutschland until I almost blew it out of the water 
with my guns, that afterwards launched a torpedo, 
even while it was just about to go down, that 
finished the Pommerny the flagship of my squad- 
ron. ' ' 

Commander C 's account of his personal 

observations at Jutland threw light on a number 
of points that the Allied public — and even those to 
whom the best information on the ^subject was 
available — ^were never able to make up their mind 
upon. 

**The English people,'' he said, **to judge 
from what I read in your papers, always deceived 
themselves about two things in connection with the 
battle you call Jutland. One of them was that the 
High Sea Fleet came out with the purpose of 
offering battle to the English fleet, or at least en- 
deavouring to cut off and destroy its battle-cruiser 
squadron. This is not the case. Quite to the con- 
trary, indeed; it was the English fleet that went 
out to catch us. We had been planning for some 



Jutland as a German Saw It 273 

time a cruiser raid on the shipping between Eng- 
land and Norway — ^which was not so well protected 
then, or even for a year and a half more, as it was 
the last year — and the High Sea Fleet and Von 
Hipper *s battle-cruisers were out to back up the 
raiding craft. As usual, your Intelligence Bureau 
learned of this plan, and the English fleet came 
out to spoil it. It was Von Hipper, not Beatty, 
who was surprised when the battle-cruisers sighted 
each other. Beatty 's surprise came a few minutes 
later, when two of his ships were blown up almost 
before they had fired a shot. That seemed to vin- 
dicate, right then and there, our belief in our 
superior gunnery and the inferior construction of 
the English ships. Unfortunately, there was 
nothing quite so striking occurred after that 
to support that vindication. The other English 
battle-cruiser, and the several armoured cruisers, 
sunk were destroyed as a consequence of exposing 
themselves to overwhelming fire. It was the 
chance of finishing off all the English battle- 
cruisers before the battle fleet came to their rescue 
that tempted Von Scheer to follow Beatty north, 
and as a consequence he was all but drawn into the 
general action that it was his desire to avoid above 
anything else. 

^ * The other thing that the English naval critics 
(although I think your Intelligence Bureau must 



274 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

have had the real facts before very long) deceived 
themselves and the public about was in tbe matter 
of Zeppelin reconnaissance during, and previous 
to, the Horn Reef battle. They have continued to 
state from that day right down to the end of the 
war that it was the German airships which warned 
Von Scheer of the approach of Jellicoe, and so 
enabled the High Sea Fleet to escape. Perhaps 
the most conclusive evidence that we did not have 
airship reconnaissance was the fact that Von 
Scheer was not only drawn into action with 
Jellicoe, but that he even got into a position where 
he could not prevent the English ships from pass- 
ing to the east of him — ^that is, between him and 
his bases. I will hardly need to tell you that 
neither of these things would have happened if 
we had had airships to keep us advised of the 
whereabouts of your battle fleet. It was our in- 
tention to have had Zeppelin scouts preceding us 
into the North Sea on this occasion — as we always 
have done when practicable — but the weather con- 
ditions were not favourable. We did have Zeppe- 
lins out on the following day, and these, I have 
read, were sighted by the English. But if any 
were reported on the day of the battle, I can only 
say it was a mistake. It is very easy to mistake 
a small round cloud, moving with the wind, for a 
foreshortened Zeppelin, especially if you are ex- 



Jutland as a German Saw It 275 

pecting an airship to appear in that quarter of the 
sky/' 

Of the opening phases of the Jutland battle 
Commander C did not see a great deal per- 
sonally. *^We were steaming at a moderate 
speed,'' he said, **when Von Hipper 's signal was 
received stating he was engaging enemy battle- 
cruisers and leading them south — that is, in the 
direction from which we were approaching. As 
there were a number of pre-dreadnoughts in 
the fleet, its speed — as long as it kept together 
— was limited to the speed of these. In knots 
we were doing perhaps sixteen when the first 
signal was received, and even after forming 
battle line this speed was not materially in- 
creased for some time. I understood the rea- 
son for this when I heard that the engine-room 
had been ordered to make no more smoke than 
was positively necessary. We had given much 
attention to regulating draught, and on this oc- 
casion it was only a few minutes before there 
was hardly more than a light grey cloud issuing 
from every funnel the whole length of the line. 
The idea, of course, was to prevent the English 
ships from finding out any sooner than could be 
helped that they were being led into an * ambush.' 
As long as we did not increase speed it was easy 
to keep down the smoke, and I am sure that the 



276 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

first evidence the enemy had of the presence of 
the High Sea Fleet was when they saw our masts 
and funnels. But we saw them before that — we 
saw the two great towers of smoke that went high 
up into the sky when two of them blew up, and 
we saw the smoke from their funnels half an hour 
before their topmasts came above the horizon. At 
this time, although all of the ships of the High Sea 
Fleet were coal burners, they were making less 
smoke than the four oil-burning ships of the Queen 
Elizabeth class, which we sighted not long after 
the English battle-cruisers. As soon as we began 
to increase speed, of course, we made more smoke 
than they did. 

'^The four remaining English battle-cruisers 
turned north as soon as they sighted us, and I do 
not think the fire of the High Sea Fleet did them 
much harm. They drew away from us very 
rapidly, of course, so that pur 'ambush' plan did 
not come to anything after all. A squadron of 
English light cruisers, which were leading the 
battle-cruisers when we first sighted them, almost 
fell into the trap, though, or, at any rate, their 
very brave (or very foolish) action in standing on 
until they were but little over 10,000 metres from 
the head of our line gave us the best kind of a 
chance to sink the lot of them. That we did not 



Jutland as a German Saw It 277 

do this was partly due to the fact that most of the 
ships of our line were still endeavouring to reach 
the English battle-cruisers with long-range fire, 
and partly (I must admit it, though my own guns 
were among those that failed to find their mark) 
to poor shooting. These light cruisers did not 
turn until we opened fire at something over 10,000 
metres; but although all our squadron concen- 
trated upon them during the hour and more be- 
fore the great speed they put on took them out of 
range, none of them were sunk, and I am not even 
sure that any was badly hit. 

*^When the four ships of the Queen Elizabeth 
class came into action there was a while when 
they were receiving the concentrated fire of prac- 
tically the whole High Sea Fleet, and possibly 
some of that of our battle-cruisers as well. Yet 
it did not appear that — ^beyond putting one of 
them (which we later learned was the War spite) 
out of control for a while — ^we did them much dam- 
age. The weight of our fire seemed to affect 
theirs a good deal, though, and at this stage of 
the fight they did not score many hits upon those 
of our ships — it was upon the squadron of Konigs 
that they seemed trying to concentrate — ^that they 
gave their attention to. Later, when the effort to 
destroy several of the newly arrived squadron of 



278 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

English battle-cruisers and armoured cruisers 
drew a part of our fire, their heavy shells did much 
damage. 

**The High Sea Fleet's line became consider- 
ably broken and extended in the course of the pur- 
suit of the English battle-cruisers and the Queen 
Elisabeths, the swifter Konigs steaming out well 
in advance in an effort to destroy some of the 
English ships before their battle fleet came into 
action, and my own squadron dropping a good 
way astern. That was the reason that my ship 
neither gave nor received much punishment in 
the daylight action. It was our battle-cruisers 
and the more modern battleships of the High Sea 
Fleet — principally the latter — ^which, tricked by 
the bad visibility, suddenly found themselves well 
inside the range of the deployed battleships of 
the main English fleet. I can only say that I 
am thankful that I did not have to experience at 
first hand the example they received of what it 
meant to face the full fire of that fleet. The 
English shooting, which opened a little wild on 
account of the mists, soon steadied down, and I 
have heard officers of four or five of our ships say 
that it was becoming impossible to make reply 
with their guns when darkness broke off the action. 
I have already told you how our torpedo * bar- 
rage' — in forcing the English fleet to sheer off 



Jutland as a German Saw It 279 

until it was too late for decisive action — saved a 
large part, if not all, of our fleet from destruction. 
What would have happened in the event that the 
attack had been pressed, no one can say. It would 
all have depended upon the extent of the damage 
inflicted by our torpedoes. I can only say that — 
as it was a contingency we had prepared for by 
long practice — Jellicoe would only have been play- 
ing into our hands in taking his whole fleet inside 
effective torpedo range, and I have confidence 
enough in the plan to wish that he had tried it. 
It would have meant a shorter war whatever hap- 
pened, and, what is more, anything would have 
been better for us than what did come to pass — 
two years of gradual paralysis of the German 
navy, with a disgraceful surrender at the end. 

**As I have said, we were anxious to avoid a 
night action on account of our shortage of tor- 
pedoes, however much such an action would have 
been to our advantage had not our supply of these 
been so nearly exhausted. So we were a good 
deal relieved when it became apparent that the 
enemy were not making any special effort to get in 
touch with us again after darkness fell. As a 
consequence of this disinclination of both sides 
to seek an engagement, such clashes as did occur 
were the sequel to chance encounters in the dark, 
and in most cases they seem to have been broken 



280 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

off by the common desire of both parties. Some 
of your destroyers persisted in their attacks when- 
ever they got in touch with one of our ships, but 
we usually made them pay a very heavy price for 
the damage inflicted. 

**Von Scheer took the High Sea Fleet back to 
harbour by passing astern of the English battle 
fleet, which had continued on to the south. I 
think I am correct in saying that none of the 
capital ships of either fleet were in action with 
those of the other after dark. There were two or 
three brushes between cruisers and a good many 
between destroyers and various classes of heavier 
ships. In fact, our principal difficulties arose 
through running into several flotillas of destroyers 
which seemed to have straggled from the 
squadrons to which they had been attached. My 
squadron, with a division of cruisers, ran right 
through a flotilla of about a dozen large English 
destroyers, and it would be hard to say which 
had the worst of it. We lost the Pommern (it 
would have been my ship, the Deutschland, had 
not the line been reversed a few minutes pre- 
viously) and a cruiser, and had two other cruisers 
badly damaged, one from being rammed by a little 
fighting-cock of a destroyer which must have com- 
mitted suicide in doing it. We sank two or three 
of the destroyers by gun-fire, and left two or three 



Jutland as a Grerman Saw It 281 

more stopped and looking about to blow up. Two 
of them were seen to be in collision, and there 
was also a report that they were firing at each 
other in the melee, but that was not corroborated. 
This fight only lasted a few minutes, and we saw 
no more English ships of any kind on our way 
back to harbour. 

**In the matter of the losses at Horn Eeef, we 
have never had any doubt that those of the English 
were much heavier than ours, even on your own 
admissions. And since we inflicted those losses 
with a fleet of not much over half the size of yours, 
we have always felt justified in claiming the battle 
to have been a German victory. The Liitzow was 
our only really serious loss, though the other 
battle-cruisers — especially the Derfflinger and 
Seydlitz — were of little use for many months, so 
badly had they been battered by gun-fire. The 
battleship and cruisers sunk were out of date, and 
we lost only one modern light cruiser. We may 
have lost as many destroyers as you did, though 
yours would have footed up to a greater tonnage, 
as they average larger than ours. We made a 
great mistake in concealing the loss of the Lutzow 
for several days, for, after that, the people never 
stopped thinking that there were other and greater 
losses not announced. 

*^But although the English losses must have 



282 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

been much greater than ours, I am not sure that 
they were enough greater to offset the loss of mo- 
rale in the men of the German fleet. As I have 
said, I do not think — ^unless we had tricked them 
into it, as we tried so hard to do at the end — that 
we could ever again have got them to take their 
ships out in the full knowledge that they were in 
for a fight to a finish with the English battle fleet. 
It would have been better that they had all been 
lost fighting at Horn Eeef than that they should 
have survived to bring upon themselves and their 
officers a disgrace the like of which has never been 
known in naval history. ' ' 



XI 

BACK TO BASE 

The German Naval Armistice Commission, per- 
haps as a reaction from its belligerent attitude at 
the first conference at Kiel, manifested an in- 
creasing amenability to reason with every day 
that passed, as a consequence of which the work 
of the Allied Commission was pushed to a rapid 
completion. The search of the warships was com- 
pleted in a couple of days, and the decision to limit 
the inspection of air stations to those west of 
Eiigen reduced the visits of this character to 
three, all easily reached by destroyers. Of the 
town of Kiel, nothing was seen at close quarters, 
visits in that vicinity being limited to the dock- 
yard, ships in the harbour, and the seaplane sta- 
tion of Holtenau, near the entrance to the canal. 

Although the Allied ships under embargo hardly 
arrived at Kiel for inspection at the rate promised, 
there was little to indicate that the Germans were 
endeavouring to evade their promise of doing 
everything possible to facilitate the return of these 
to the Tyne at the earliest possible moment. The 
City of Leeds, a powerfully engined little packet 

283 



284 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules'' 

which had been on the Hamburg-Harwich run be- 
fore the war, furnished the only glaring instance 
of deliberate bad faith. The German Shipping 
Commission, declaring that her crew had ruined 
her engines and boilers by pouring tar into them 
when she was seized, claimed that she had been 
quite useless since that time, and disclaimed any 
responsibility for reconditioning her. On inspec- 
tion by the Allied Shipping Commission, the state- 
ment that the engines had been damaged by any- 
thing but use and neglect was proved to be abso- 
lutely false. Why the Germans should have told 
so futile a lie was not fully explained, though as a 
possible reason it was suggested that some private 
party, desiring to keep the ship in his hands, had 
made a false report of her condition to the Ship- 
ping Commission. 

The arrival and departure of Allied prisoners 
of war was one of the most interesting features 
of the week in Kiel. The most of these were 
British — picked up by one or another of the de- 
stroyers at this or that port touched at — but there 
was one large party of French, from a camp near 
Kiel, and several Belgians, Serbs, and Italians 
from heaven knows where. These were all made 
as comfortable as possible in the Hercules, and 
dispatched to England in the next mail destroyer. 
Except for a man now and then who was suffering 



Back to Base 285 

from a neglected. wound, they were in fairly good 
condition, a fact, however, which did not lessen 
their almost rapturous enjoyment of the heaping 
pannikins of ^^good greasy grub'^ (as one of them 
put it) that was theirs for the asking at any hour 
of the day they cared to slip up to the galley. 
Their delight in the band, in the ship 's kinema, in 
*^ doubling round'' for exercise in the morning, in 
anything and everything in the life in this their 
halfway station on the road home was a joy to 
watch. 

Some of the British prisoners came from the 
same towns or counties as did men of the ship's 
company, and the exchange of reminiscences often 
went on far into the night. Passing across the 
flat between the ward-room and the commission- 
room late one evening, I heard a Lancastrian voice 
from a roll of blankets on the deck protesting to a 
bluejacket in the hammock above that ^^ Jinny 

X " of Wigan didn't have yellow hair when 

he (the owner of the voice) used to know her, and 
that, in fact, he'd always thought her rather a 
*^shy 'un." 

**Thot was afore she worked in a *T.N.T.' 
fact'ry," replied the ^^ hammock," with an into- 
nation suggesting that he felt that was sufficient 
explanation of both changes. 

A good deal of rivalry developed between the 



286 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

four escorting destroyers in the matter of picking 
up prisoners, and to hear their officers discussing 
their **bags'' or ^ ^hauls'' when they foregathered 
at night in the ward-room of the Hercules re- 
minded one of campers drifting in at the end of 
the day and yarning of the ducks they had shot 
and the fish they had caught. * ^ If we could have 
waited another half -hour twenty more were com- 
ing with us/' claims Venetia. **But even with 
those,'' replies Vidette, **you would not have been 
anywhere near our sixty-nine. ' ' It was this latter 
*^bag," indeed, which proved the record one of the 
** season," both in numbers and * Equality," for it 
consisted entirely of non-commissioned officers 
from a camp near Hamburg. 

The same cringing attempts at ingratiation and 
conciliation which had been so much in evidence in 
the attitude of the civil population toward parties 
from the Commission when they met in streets or 
stations seem also to have been consistently prac- 
tised in the case of prisoners about to be repatri- 
ated. Although the German takes naturally and 
easily to this kind of thing, just as he did to his 
schrecMichkeit and general brutalities, there was 
much in the way he went about making himself 
pleasant to returning prisoners that bore the 
marks of official inspiration. Several men who 
came to the Hercules brought copies of circular 




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Back to Base 287 

letters in English which, after pointing out that 
they had invariably been treated with the greatest 
courtesy and consideration possible under the very 
trying circumstances Germany found herself in on 
account of the blockade, hoped that they would 
bear no ill will away with them, and that the 
years to come might bring them back to Germany 
under happier circumstances. The screeds really 
had much the tone of an apologetic country host's 
farewell to guests whom he has had to keep on 
short commons on account of being snowed in or a 
breakdown on the line. 

One of the best of them was addressed to 
^ ^ English Gentlemen, ' ' and went on as follows : — 

**You are about to leave the newest, and what 
we intend to make the freest, republic in the world. 
We very much regret that you saw so little of 
what aroused our pride in the former Germany — 
her arts, sciences, model cites, theatres, schools, 
industries, and social institutions, as well as the 
beauties of our scenery and the real soul of our 
people, akin in so many things to your own. 

*^But these things will remain a part of the new 
Germany. Once the barriers of artificial hatred 
and misunderstanding have fallen, we hope that 
you will learn to know, in happier times, these 
grander features of the land whose unwilling 
guests you have been. A barbed wire enclosure 



288 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

is not the proper place from which to survey or 
judge a great nation. There will be no barbed 
wire enclosure in the Germany to which you will 
return a few months hence. In the meantime we 
feel that we can count upon you, forgetting the 
unpleasanter features of your enforced sojourn 
with us, to exert your influence to reunite the 
bonds of friendship and commerce which were 
bringing our countries ever closer and closer to- 
gether before their unfortunate severance by the 
sword of war, and upon the knitting up again of 
which the future of both so greatly depends. 

** Three cheers for peace and good will to all 
mankind ! ' ' 

Eather a delicate little touch, that ** bonds of 
commerce" one! 

Unfortunately, the language in which most of 
the prisoners described the state of mind which 
this kind of thing left them in is not quite suited 
for pubUcation. It was one of the mildest of 
them — a London cockney who seemed never quite 
to have got back all the blood he lost when his 
thigh was ripped open with shrapnel at the assault 
on Thiepval — ^who said that *^ Jerry'' never would 
get over being surprised when ' ' a bloke called 'im 

a b ^y blighter arter 'e 'd tried to shove a ersatz 

fag on you an' 'oped you w'udn't be bearin' 'im 
any 'ard feeHn's in the years to come." 



Back to Base^ 289 

The attitude tliat German girls and women ap- 
pear to have adopted toward Allied, and especially 
British, prisoners from the time the armistice 
went into force is not a pleasant thing to write of, 
and I confine myself to a single observation which 
an old sergeant of the ^^Contemptibles'' — one 
of the sixty-nine that the Vidette brought from 
Hamburg — made on the subject. It was one of 
the most witheringly biting characterizations of a 
nation I have ever heard fall from the lips of any 
man. He had been telling me in a humorous sort 
of way of *' raspberry leaf tea,'' ersatz coffee of 
various kinds, paper sheets, and various and sun- 
dry other substitutes, and then, switched off to the 
subject by a question regarding a statement a Ger- 
man officer had been heard to make about the rela- 
tions of prisoners and women of the country, he 
spoke of the ways of the girls of Hamburg since 
the armistice. 

^^ There is no doubt,'' he said, **that the young 
of both sexes have been getting more and more 
shameless in their morals ever since the beginning 
of the war, but it is only since we were practically 
set free by the armistice that the state of things 
has come home to prisoners. I don't think that 
there are very many British prisoners — certainly 
no man that I know personally — who have had 
anything to do with these young hussies ; but that 



290 To Kiel in the ^'Hercules" 

is not the fault of the girls, for they have pestered 
us only less in our camp than upon the street. 
It^s principally because we have a bit of money 
now, and sometimes a bit of food that isn't ersatz. 
I don't think I'm exaggerating very much, sir, 
when I say that fifty per cent, of the girls of the 
lower classes in Hamburg would sell themselves 
for a cake of toilet soap or a sixpenny packet of 
biscuits. Ersatz food and ersatz women! By 
Grod, sir, Germany's a country of substitutes and 
prostitutes, and it's glad I am to be seeing the 
last of it!" • 

I have yet to hear the Germany of today 
summed up more scathingly than that. 

Speaking of the moral degeneracy of Germany, 
a poster found by a member of the Commission in 
a train by which he was travelling sheds an inter- 
esting light on the subject. It was addressed to 
the ^^ Youth of Wilhelmshaven and Eiistringen" 
by the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, and the 
following is a rough translation. 

**The German youth has been a witness of the 
great liberating act of the German Revolution. 
It has witnessed how the fetters of the old regime 
were burst and Freedom made her entry into the 
stronghold of reaction, the Prussian military 
state. And it is the youth of today which will 
reap the fruits of this great change. It will one 



Back to Base 291 

day find as an accomplished fact all that for which 
the best of the people have sacrificed themselves. 

** Therefore the most serious duties are laid 
upon the youth of today, to which it is becoming 
increasingly necessary to draw their attention. 
Complaints are unfortunately increasing of late 
that the youth is lapsing more and more into moral 
anarchy, which carries with it the most serious 
dangers for the future. Revolution does not mean 
disorder, but a new order. Eemember that the 
whole future of Germany depends upon you ; you 
are the trustees of the future. Be conscious of 
the great responsibility which rests today upon 
your young shoulders. . . . You must now learn 
to be equal to the task which awaits you. Obey 
your teachers and leaders. That is the first de- 
mand made upon all today. 

*^We expect, therefore, that you take this warn- 
ing to heart, and that we may not be forced to take 
stronger measures against those among you who 

either cannot or will not submit ! ' * 

# # # # # 

There was a suggestion of power and strength 
in the name itself, and in setting out to inspect the 
Great Belt Forts there were few in the party who 
had not visions of uncovering the secrets of some- 
thing very much in the nature of a Baltic Gibraltar 
or Heligoland. *^ Number One'' or the ^^ Inter- 



292 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

nationar' sub-commission turned out in full 
strength in anticipation of what had generally 
been regarded as the crowning, as it was the con- 
cluding, event of the visit. The very protestations 
of the Germans only whetted their interest the 
keener, for it was a precisely similar line to one 
they had taken in the matter of the visit to Ton- 
dern, where there had been something worth see- 
ing. **Look out for surprises in connection with 
the * Great Belt' inspection,*' was the word, and 
every one in any way entitled to attach himself to 
what was to be the last party landed before the 
return of the Commission to England made ar- 
rangements to do so. 

Brave with swords, bright with brass hats, 
aglitter with aiguillettes was the imposing line of 
French, British, Italian, American and Japanese 
officers who filed across from the Hercules to the 
Verdun an hour before dawn on the morning of 
December 16. An hour after darkness descended, 
wet with rain, bespattered with mud, ashiver with 
cold, those same officers straggled back to the 
Hercules again. This is the order in which one 
of them summed up the day's observation : * ^ The 
most notable event of the inspection," he said as 
he warmed his chilled frame before the ward-room 
fire, **was the sight of the first pig we have clapped 
eyes on in Germany; the next so was meeting a 



Back to Base 293 

Hun witli enough of a sense of humour to take us 
three miles round by a muddy road and over 
ploughed fields and deep ditches to a point he 
could have reached by a mile of comparatively dry 
railway track ; and the third was a drive through 
ten miles of Schleswig countryside that was 
beautiful beyond words, even in the pelting rain. 
The Great Belt Forts I Oh, yes, we saw them. 
They were ^ye holes in the ground on top of one 
hill, four holes in the ground on the top of another 
fifteen miles away, and a dozen or so ancient guns 
dumped into the hold of a tug. But — let^s talk 
about the pig. ^ ' 

There is not much that I can add to ths succinct 
summary of the inspection of the forts of the 
*^ Baltic Gibraltar.'' What the sub-commission 
saw — or rather failed to see — there went a long 
way toward confirming the impression (which had 
been growing stronger ever since the arrival of 
the Hercules at Wilhelmshaven) that Germany 
had depended upon mines rather than guns for 
the defence of her coasts. The porker mentioned 
was the one I alluded to in an earlier chapter as 
just failing to win the officer sighting it the pool 
which was to go to the first man who saw a pig in 
Germany, because an Irish-American member of 
the party had testified that it had * * died from hog 
cholera an hour before it had been killed. ' ' The 



294 To Kiel in the '^ Hercules" 

lovely stretch of farming country driven through 
showed many signs of its Danish character, and at 
several windows I even saw the red-and-white flag 
of the mother country discreetly displayed. This 
region, of course, falls well north of the line that 

is expected to form the new Danish boundary. 

***** 

At the final conference with the German Naval 
Armistice Commission, which was held in the 
Hercules on the morning of the 17th, Admiral 
Goette and his associates, in striking contrast to 
their belligerent attitude at the first meeting in 
Kiel, proved thoroughly docile and conciliatory. 
All of the important points at issue were conceded 
— including the surrender of submarines building 
and the delivery of the Baden in place of Macken- 
sen — and tentative arrangements were made for 
future visits of special Allied Commissions when- 
ever these should be deemed necessary to insure 
the enforcement of the provisions of the armistice. 
Work on the reconditioning of all Allied merchant 
ships was to be given precedence over everything 
else. Considering that he had no trumps either 
in his hands or up his sleeve. Admiral Goette 
played his end of the game with considerable skill. 
Such futile attempts at *^ bluffing'' as he made 
were invariably traceable to pressure exerted upon 
him from the *' outside,'' probably Berlin. Per- 



Back to Base 295 

sonally, in spite of the severe nervous strain he 
was nnder (the effects of which were increasingly 
noticeable at every succeeding conference), he de- 
ported himself with a dignity compatible with his 
heavy responsibilities. The same may be said of 
Captain Von Miiller, which is perhaps as far down 
the list as it would be charitable to go in this 
connection. 

'tF ^F ^F 'fF ^F 

Weighing anchor at noon of the 18th, the 
Hercules was locked through into the canal in 
good time to see in daylight that section which had 
been passed in darkness in coming through from 
the North Sea. A rain, which turned into soft 
snow as the afternoon lengthened, was responsible 
for rather less frequent and numerous crowds of 
spectators than on the previous passage. The 
ubiquitous Eussian prisoner was still much in evi- 
dence. An especially pathetic figure was that of 
a lone poilu — still in horizon blue, with the skirts 
of his bedraggled overcoat buttoned back in char- 
acteristic fashion — ^whom I sighted just before 
dark. Leaning dejectedly on his hoe in a beet- 
field, he watched the Hercules pass without so 
much as lifting a finger. Most likely the unlucky 
chap took her for a German, for the rapturous 
demonstrations with which a score of his comrades 
signalized their arrival aiboard a few days before 



296 To Kiel in the ''Hercules" 

showed very clearly how a French prisoner would 
greet a British ship if he knew her nationality. 

The Hercules went into her lock at Brunsbiittel 
an hour before midnight. The Regensburg, which 
had preceded her through the canal, was already 
in the adjoining lock, and in attempting to pass on 
the light cruiser Constance and three British 
destroyers at the same operation the canal people 
made rather a mess of things. There was a 
savage crashing and tearing of metal at one stage, 
followed by a considerable flow of profanity in 
two languages. When, the next morning in the 
Bight, a signal of condolence was made by the 
Hercules to one of the destroyers following in her 
wake on the ** messy" state of its nose, the reply 
came back. ** Don't worry about my nose. You 
ought to see the Regensburg. I've got a piece of 
her side-plating on my forecastle!" That was 
the second time the unlucky Regensburg had come 
to grief in locking through at Brunsbuttel with the 
ships of the Allied Naval Commission. 

Owing to the fog, the Germans were unable, or 
unwilling, to send a ship to take off their pilots 
from the Hercules and escorting destroyers after 
the outer limits of the mine-fields had been passed, 
and it became necessary as a consequence to carry 
them on to Rosyth. The change of air and food 
incidental to their personally conducted tour to 



Back to Base 297 

Scapa (to await the next German transport home) 
was evidently a by no means disagreeable prospect 
to them, judging by the way they took the news. 
The steward who reported that the pilot he was 
looking after had been ^^ stowing away grub like 
he expected a long continuance of the blockade/' 
may have stumbled upon the reason for their 
philosophic attitude. 

We found the Firth of Forth as we left it — 
wrapped in fog. There was just enough visibility 
to make it possible to find the gates in the booms 
and the main channel under the bridge. The his- 
toric voyage came to an end when the Hercules, 
after tying up to the Queen Elizabeth^ s buoy for a 
few hours, went into the dry dock at two-thirty in 
the afternoon of the 20th. The Commission left 
for London the same evening in a special train 
provided by the Admiralty. 



THE END 



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